Internet of Things is expanding each day and there are many newbie in the marketplace who are implementing the technology in a way such that a maximum of popularity and productivity can be attained. So, it is obvious that there are many things that can create concern and questions. Well, many of the organizations are trying to struggle with interconnectivity. Among all, there exists a major concern that how do we need to get connect existing information system with the new existing system. Most of the people must be thinking that remodeling the information system and modifying business process can help out, but this fact isn’t true.
Many organizations are concerned about the process to use unstructured data in real time evolving from various sources. They are exactly finding out the way to create the flow through which they can convert infinite stream of raw data into useful one. There are many more concerns of organizations like how to track flexibility and scalability in order to deal with growth and change. Keeping track of changes is required in order to maintain the things at a constant path, if they are undone for any reason.
Additionally, one of the major concerns apart from above mentioned ones is the security of IoT device. It is worth thinking, is it necessary to store important data in the cloud. This is a matter of concern because there are many possibilities that data theft might take place due to cyber attacks. Also, if the data is not used for broadcasting, how it can be protected from internal threats that may arise within inter-connected systems. Any employee or involved person cannot be trusted for not stealing the data. Such possible issues are not allowing the organizations to explore various lucrative benefits of IoT.
There are many more reasons that is hindering the complete usage of IoT by the companies. One more reason is the level of difficulty and cost consumption. Fortunately, many resources can answer these questions to the organizations having issues in IoT usability. However, the communication protocol sets the best example for the IoT applications that have been launched, tested and used by the organizations since when it was released.
The above mentioned issues have been considered by a few reputed firms, so that they can get resolved. OPC Unified Architecture (UA) is a service-oriented and independent architecture that has been introduced and maintained by OPC foundation. OPC has become an integral unit if SCADA systems because it has set an interoperability standard for an industrial automation. The data systems usually grow beyond their traditional roles in order to include sensor data and combine the data from multiple systems. Thus, it is worth that OPC foundations will maintain its presence at the forefront and its communication standard which can get embraced by organizations dealing with Internet of Things.
OPC UA has been recognized universally because it tracks the obstacles coming on the way of organizations dealing in IoT implementations projects. Inter-connectivity issues is exactly resembling the issue that emerged at the development phase of an address as per the communication standard. In the current scenario, a plethora of devices exists and there are many more devices that have been manufactured using the embedded OPC servers. These servers allow the exact interoperability as that of other systems and devices. The concerns associated with the functionality of multi-system data is marked on the basis of information modeling. OPC UA information model architecture turns the data into useful information.
Another interesting fact is that object-oriented capabilities even allow the multi-level structures to get modeled and extended. OPC UA-based system also becomes more extensible and customized with the aid of information modeling system. As per the few visual representations of actual systems, modifications can be made within information models so as to meet the growing needs of any company. While choosing a communication technology, it is very important to consider the security and this is the primary thing that is taken under consideration by OPC UA. It provides security in various modes such as message singing, session encryption, user control, authentication, auditing of user activity and user control.
It can be concluded that there is an uncertainty in Internet of Things, but OPC UA is the platform where a communication standard can be expected.