We are excited to extend our lead in standards-based Industrie 4.0 cloud solutions using the industrial interoperability standard OPC UA, with several new product announcements at SPS IPC Drives 2017 in Nuernberg, Europe’s leading industrial automation exhibition, which takes place next week.

We continue to be the only cloud provider that offers both OPC UA client/server as well as the upcoming (in OPC UA version 1.04) Publish/Subscribe communication pattern to the cloud and back with open-source modules for easy connection to existing machines, without requiring changes to these machines and without requiring opening the on-premises firewall. We achieve this though the two Azure IoT Edge modules OPC Proxy and OPC Publisher, which are available open-source on GitHub and as Docker containers on DockerHub.

As previously announced, we have now contributed an open-source OPC UA Global Discovery Server (GDS) and Client to the OPC Foundation GitHub. This contribution now brings us close to the 4.5 million source lines of contributed code landmark, keeping us in the lead as largest contributor of open-source software to the OPC Foundation. This server can be run in a container and used for self-hosting in the OT network.

Additionally at SPS, Microsoft will demo its commercial, fully Azure IoT integrated version of the GDS and accompanying client at the OPC Foundation booth. This version runs as part of the Azure IoT Edge offering made available to the public last week.

We have continued to release monthly updates to our popular open-source Azure IoT Suite Connected Factory preconfigured solution which we launched at Hannover Messe this year. Most recently, we have updated the look and feel to be in line with the new set of preconfigured solutions currently being released. We will continue to release new versions of the Connected Factory on a monthly basis with improvements and new features, so check them out on a regular basis.

Our OPC UA Gateway program also keeps growing rapidly. Since we launched the program just six months ago at Hannover Messe, we now have 13 partners signed up including Softing, Unified Automation, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Kepware, Cisco, Beckhoff, Moxa, Advantech, Nexcom, Prosys OPC, MatrikonOPC, Kontron, and Hilscher.

Furthermore, we are excited to announce that the Industrial IoT Starter Kit, previously announced at OPC Day Europe, is now available to order online from our partner Softing. The kit empowers companies to securely link their production line from the physical factory floor to the Microsoft Azure IoT Suite Connected Factory in less than one day. This enables the management, collection, and analysis of OPC UA telemetry data in a centralized way to gain valuable business insights immediately and improve operational efficiency. As with all our Industrial IoT products, this kit uses OPC UA, but also comes with a rich PLC protocol translation software from Softing called dataFEED OPC Suite. It comes with industry-grade hardware from Hewlett Packard Enterprise in the form of the HPE GL20 IoT Gateway. Swing by the Microsoft booth to check it out and get the chance to try it out for 6 months in your own industrial installation.

Stop by our booth in Hall 6, as well as the OPC Foundation booth in Hall 7 to see all of this for yourself!