The global OPC Server Market is estimated to surpass $3.7 billion mark by 2027 growing at an estimated CAGR of more than 5.8% during the forecast period 2022 to 2027. Open Platform Communications (OPC) is a set of industrial telecommunication standards and specifications. OPC defines the exchange of real-time data across control devices for different software providers. OPC was created to serve as a bridge between Windows-based software applications and process control devices. The goal was to reduce the amount of work that hardware manufacturers and their software partners had to do twice from component object model usage to network address translation. It is an industrial IOT Gateway that is commonly used in MES, ERP, PLC (Programmable Logic Controller), MES, SCADA, and DCS (Distributed Control System) systems. The OPC Gateway offers efficient, quick, and secure data transport across networked computers without the need to deal with DCOM configuration concerns, bandwidth limitations, domain constraints, or firewall barriers. One of the major factors driving the growth of the OPC server market is the growing prevalence of smart factories and the emergence of Industrial robots. OPC UA technology-based server will be used as a key industrial standard for connecting OT (Operational Technology) and IT (Information Technology) in smart factories. Also, the increasing growth of the automotive industry with rising investments and developments is one of the primary reasons behind the upliftment of the OPC server market. For instance, Ford invested 230 million pounds (US$316 million) to build electric car components at its Halewood factory in northern England. The plant will produce around 250,000 power units a year from mid-2024, the first European in-house location to make electric vehicle parts for Ford, which has pledged that its car line-up for the continent will be all-electric by 2030. However, security issues associated with the OPC u/a server and the high operating cost of OPC server night hinder the market growth.
Report Coverage
The report: “OPC Server Market– Forecast (2022-2027)”, by IndustryARC covers an in-depth analysis of the following segments of the OPC Server Market Report.
By Offering Type: Software, IIoT Gateway.
By Application: Machine-to-Machine Communication (M2M), Asset Management, Device Diagnostics & Monitoring, Industrial Robotic Systems, Process & Quality Control, Condition Monitoring, Others.
By Industry Vertical: Oil & Gas, Food & Beverages, Power, Automotive, General manufacturing, Electronics & Semiconductor, Utilities, Transportation & logistics, Chemical, Pharmaceutical, Aerospace & Defense and Others.
By Functionality: Single Server - Single Client, OPC Aggregation, OPC Bridging, OPC Tunneling.
By Geography: North America (U.S, Canada, Mexico), South America(Brazil, Argentina and others), Europe (Germany, UK, France, Italy, Spain, Russia and Others), APAC(China, Japan India, SK, Aus and Others), and RoW (Middle East and Africa).
Key Takeaways
- The gradual development of the MES system, increasing the number of users, enhancing functionality in short, over time we needed to replace OPC servers with newer and more powerful ones. However, When OPC UA is fully implemented it is very expensive and heavy. The architecture requires embedding an OPC UA server into products which increases the cost and time-to-market, increases the footprint size, CPU utilization, development costs and ongoing support costs.
- The purchasing price of OPC server grew by around 20% year over year, according to domestic foundry companies. Supply and demand issues are also causing problems for some businesses. This comes after Siemens AG, the world's largest OPC server manufacturer, announced a 20% price hike in April 2021.
- Though OPC servers have made a significant impact to industrial software interoperability, high cost of OPC Server coupled with operational complexities have become a prime concern for every organization which acts as a major challenge restraining the market growth of OPC Server market. Since operational budget is the most important factor considered while organizations invest in advanced tools & technologies, the cost of suitable OPC Server associated with maintaining & training employees on its utilization, slows down its market growth. When OPC UA is fully implemented it becomes very expensive and heavy. The architecture requires embedding an OPC UA server into products, increasing the footprint size, CPU utilization, development costs and ongoing support costs. In addition, OPC applications tend to have hidden latency costs impacting factory productivity. This cost is often represented by thousands of downtime minutes behind data polling time.
OPC Server Market Segment Analysis - By Industry Vertical
Automotive segment accounts for 14.2% share of the OPC Server market in 2021. OPC server in automotive industry assure interoperation between the Electronic Control Units (ECUs). This is enabled through the standard’s flexibility and ability scale to many manufacturing levels because of its multiple code options, including Java, ANSI C/C++ and Microsoft .NET code. Government initiatives, backed by major investments in the automotive industry has proved to be a great opportunity for OPC server market growth. For instance, in 2022 the Indian government introduced the production linked incentive (PLI) scheme for automobile and auto component sectors, which has attracted investment proposals of US$9 billion for the next five years, 76.1% higher than the planned target. According to the Organisation Internationale des Constructeurs d'Automobiles (OICA), in 2021, global vehicle sales rose to 8.27 billion units from 7.87 billion unit in 2020. on the other hand, according to the International Energy Agency Organization (IEA), sales of electric cars rose to 2.1 million globally in 2020, surpassing 2019.
OPC Server Market Segment Analysis - By Application
Machine-to-Machine Communication (M2M) segment dominated the OPC Server Market with a revenue share of 29.3% in 2021 and is expected to rise at a CAGR of 4.34% during the forecast period from 2022-2027. Machine-to-machine communication is often used for remote monitoring. In product restocking, for example, a vending machine can message the distributor's network, or machine, when a particular item is running low to send a refill. Leading Internet-of-Things (IoT) vendors are adopting OPC UA technology for edge-to-cloud applications. The growing list includes Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, IBM, Microsoft, SAP and SIEMENS. the global adoption of OPC UA as the open standard of choice for secure production-system interoperability across OT and IT networks, leveraging standardized data exchange. As such, there are over 850 registered OPC Foundation members supporting a large, rapidly growing ecosystem of end-users, standards bodies, and vendors.
OPC Server Market Segment Analysis - By Geography
Europe region dominated the OPC Server Market with a revenue share of 33% in 2021 and is expected to rise at a CAGR of 4.92% during the forecast period 2022-2027. The growing automotive sector in European countries is the major factor driving the market growth. For instance, in 2021 Ford invested around US$300 million to build electric car parts at UK plant which can produce 250,000 power units within a year. The growth of the OPC server market in the U.K. is majorly attributed to the increasing adoption of latest technology across the industry verticals to enhance performance as well as the exponential demand for real-time data analysis across these geographies. The growth of the OPC server market in the region is majorly attributed to the increasing adoption of the latest technology across the industry verticals to enhance performance as well as the exponential demand for real-time data analysis across these geographies.
OPC Server Market Drivers
Increasing demand for communication solutions and rising investments in Power & Utilities industry are set to drive the market growth forward
Rising demand for communication solutions in Power & Utilities industry is set to propel the growth of the OPC Server market in coming years. OPC Servers are adopted to help in streamlining the data delivery across the Power & Utilities industries and connect critical facility components. OPC Servers also helps in collecting, managing and aggregating data from equipment in local and remote locations for real-time control, protection, and monitoring of integral information. OPC Server provides the most complete support of the OPC standard, exchanging data between multi-vendor devices and control applications without proprietary restrictions. The accurate, secure and real-time acquisition and delivery of critical information across networks is a key requirement for the Power & Utilities industries. Industry standards and regulatory requirements for protection and control systems data are rigorous and growing safety concerns has increased the demand for OPC Server in power industry. The growing trend towards monitoring a vast amount of system-critical information to effectively minimize downtime of equipment and ensure maximum network performance is a major priority for today’s power producers, grid operators, and owner/operators of industrial facilities which in turn accelerates the demand for OPC server to make these complex systems operate more efficiently than ever before. Moreover, OPC Servers supports telemetry solutions such as cellular, radio, and satellite modems in a remote windfarm, or in a utility control centre by providing additional capabilities to optimize communications through virtual networks, definition of timeouts, demotion of inaccessible devices, and allows users to schedule when to communicate with specific devices with the advanced Plug-in. Furthermore, Rising investments towards digitalization of power & utilities industry in order to boost productivity and increase efficiency is also analyzed to contribute towards speedy expansion of the global OPC Server market in future years. The pace of digitalisation in energy is increasing. Investment in digital technologies by energy companies has risen sharply over the last few years. For instance, according to IEA, global investment in digital electricity infrastructure and software has grown up since 2020, reaching USD 530 billion in 2021. This investment in 2021 was almost 3.3% higher than investment in power generation worldwide (USD 513 billion) in 2020. Such investments in digitalization of power industry are analyzed to aid the market growth over time.
Emergence of Industrial robots are set to drive the market growth forward
The emergence of Industrial robots requires secure, standardized exchange of data and information between its integrated robot systems and their components to provide a comparison of the status and parameters over many installed systems and allows for the identification of anomalies which in turn is set to propel the growth of the OPC Server market in coming years. Additionally, the increasing demand for unified interface standard for robots to address asset management and condition monitoring is driving the growth of the OPC U/A server market. In 2019, VDMA, the Germany-based Mechanical Engineering Industry Association, launched the OPC Robotics Companion Specification that covers asset management and condition monitoring to enable organisations to surface information on the operational status of their robot systems, down to the inpidual component level. Companies can monitor the condition of their robot systems against given parameters such as motor temperature, load or time cycle. This information collected can be integrated into applications pertaining to use cases such as predictive maintenance, thus helping manufacturers to plan maintenance, and mitigate expensive production downtime. The eminent rise in the adoption of industrial robots across several sectors and government initiatives foster the development of advanced robots such as AI-enabled robots and collaborative robots for facilitating industrial automation, thereby driving the growth of OPC Server Market. As per IFR, Industrial Robots market size is forecasted to reach $75.65 bn by 2026. In June 2020, Norwegian software company Rocketfarm, the creator of software systems for the Robots, announced the development of UR cobot that support OPC UA Industry 4.0 protocol. The OPC UA protocol is considered as a major component in Industry 4.0, and one of the fastest growing standards for machine to machine communication, and thus, UR collaborative robots are designed for enhanced security features. In 2020, Fanuc Corporation announced that all its robot serves as the OPC U/A server, thus allowing the monitoring of an operation from an OPC UA Client PC.
OPC Server Market Challenges
Security issues associated with OPC U/A Server
Security issues associated with OPC U/A acts as one of the major challenges hampering the market growth of OPC server. The flaw that has been identified by cybersecurity and anti-virus providers on OPC U/A server is listening for network connections from OPC UA clients. Any application that listens for connections on a network can equally be a point of attack for a malicious hacker. Moreover, accessing sensitive information has become easier day by day due to technological advancements as well as their incapability of incorporating more efficient security tools to prevent such attacks. Such factors are hampering the adoption of OPC server owing to high risks and thus restraining the market growth of OPC server. Furthermore, OPC U/A servers are not suitable for untrusted networks like the Internet. Industrial IoT approach poses a serious risk on OPC U/A servers because the client is often outside the trusted plant network. It needs an open firewall port into the plant to connect which is the fundamental reason for the security problem. According to Kaspersky OPC U/A security analysis report 2018, Kaspersky labs identified 17 critical security flaws in the OPC UA implementations such as issues with the ANSI-C sample server application published on GitHub as well as several vulnerabilities in the commercial applications that use these products. Also, according to this report, in most cases, flaws in third-party software that uses the OPC UA Stack were caused by the developers not using functions from the API implemented in the OPC Foundation’s uastack.dll library properly. This type of attack can only be effectively prevented by keeping OPC UA servers within the trusted network and keeping all firewall ports closed, which enables secure Industrial IoT connectivity while still reaping the benefits of OPC UA server in the plant.
OPC Server Market Landscape
Product launches, acquisitions, and R&D activities are key strategies adopted by players in the BLE Market. The top 10 OPC Server companies include:
- Siemens
- Emerson
- ABB
- Kepware
- Softing
- Matrikon
- Fanuc
- Omron
- Yokogawa
- Takebishi
Recent Developments
- In March 2021, Advantech (2395 TW launched a next generation OPC UA I/O sensing module with Modbus protocol. ADAM-6300 is an IT/OT convergence series that integrates information technology (IT) systems with operational technology (OT)—representing a leap forward in smart IoT technology for factories and utilities. Moreover, through the OPC UA and built-in security IC, data is highly secured throughout the OT and IT levels.
- In November 2021, Siemens Energy and Automation Inc.’s launched SIMATIC WinCC Version 5.0, a 32-bit HMI (Human-Machine Interface) software integrated with Microsoft Windows NT V4.0. The software, developed in cooperation with Microsoft, WinCC is a core element in PC Based Automation. WinCC supports OPC (OLE for Process Control), the industry standard for communicating with automation hardware and software devices on the factory floor, and also supports ODBC
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