Report from the Open Process Automation Forum (OPAF) discussing how they believe their standards will deliver concrete business value to end users of process automation systems. OPAF has moved quickly towards establishing the framework for an open, interoperable, secure, standards-based automation architecture.
OPAF leaders will provide an overview of the parts of the O-PAS standard and show how the standards enable development of products. O-PAS V2.1 being readied for preliminary release contains critical elements describing the information exchange, function blocks, and interface execution engines as well as physical platform standard and security that will allow suppliers to build products to the standard. O-PAS Version 3 will address application portability and orchestration.
Work is underway to deploy the first wave of conformance certification that will provide the marketplace reassurance on 100% conformance to the specification. OPAF is moving ahead with O-PAS adoption workshop to launch the marketplace and ecosystem.
End users have started significant development efforts to build O-PAS based systems including prototype, test bed systems to prepare for field trials, and to demonstrate the value of the system in their industry. It is notable that these test systems are already evaluating multiple prototype DCN products.
The discussion will include a panel of experts from the various OPAF working groups who will answer questions related to the progress in the standard selection, value drivers for their own organizations, and preparing for adoption of O-PAS compliant products.