OPC UA & DDS Forge Unified Partnership with IIC and Industrie 4.0

Our partnership began at NIWeek, National Instruments’ flagship event in Austin, Texas. There, Thomas Burke, President & Executive Director of the OPC Foundation, approached me with an invitation to unite the two leading connectivity standards in the IIoT: OPC UA and DDS. With RTI’s deep expertise in the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) and in DDS, we were uniquely positioned to forge this alliance.

While the idea was straightforward, the journey was not. Both communities were wrestling with how to clearly differentiate their core value propositions. In reality, OPC UA and DDS address distinct problems, serve different industries, and complement each other even within a single application. Yet, early on, the market misinterpreted their collaboration as a conflict.

To understand this confusion, recall how the internet revolutionized banking, retail, and travel, yet industrial sites—factories, hospitals, power plants—continued to operate with legacy architectures. Gartner predicts that the forthcoming “smart‑machine era” will be the most disruptive in IT history. As GE’s CEO famously said, "If you close the door on an industrial manufacturer, you’ll find it has become a software and analytics company." This modernization—known as the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)—is poised to touch every industry.

Large‑scale trends invariably spark anxiety. In this case, the perceived clash centered on two influential industry alliances: Germany’s Industrie 4.0, backed by over a billion euros in government investment, and the U.S.‑based Industrial Internet Consortium, founded in 2014 by five major technology firms. Because both groups were shaping “industrial systems” architecture, many assumed they were competitors. Media coverage amplified this narrative, culminating in a purported technical rivalry between OPC UA and DDS that seemed to divide the community.

Today, the IIC and Industrie 4.0 have joined forces, combining the manufacturing depth of Industrie 4.0 with the cross‑industry breadth of the IIC. Their collaboration underlines that OPC UA and DDS are complementary, not adversarial.

Our roadmap has been challenging but is progressing steadily. The Object Management Group (OMG) has initiated an official standards effort to define an OPC UA/DDS bridge. The OPC Foundation is developing a “DDS Profile” for OPC UA PubSub, while the IIC is deploying joint testbeds to validate integration. Together, we are shaping the future of the IIoT.

The accompanying positioning document and press release—released today—represent the collective effort of leading DDS and OPC UA vendors, the IIC and Industrie 4.0, and the OMG and OPC Foundation standards bodies. I would like to thank Thomas Burke, Stefan Hoppe (OPC Foundation), Matthias Damm (Unified Automation), and RTI’s Gerardo Pardo‑Castellote for their leadership in coordinating this historic partnership.

By aligning political leadership with cutting‑edge technology, we are building a standardized, interoperable architecture that will underpin the next generation of industrial connectivity.