The Industrial IoT Blog
IIoT Insights by Henry Costa
Tag: OPC UA
An industrial communication standard used to securely exchange data between machines and systems. It provides a common, vendor-neutral way to access and model industrial data.
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Industrial DataOps. Turning Plant Data Into Trusted Data
Read more: Industrial DataOps. Turning Plant Data Into Trusted DataMost manufacturing teams I’ve worked with have the same quiet problem. They can connect machines. They can collect data. They can even stream it to a data lake. But when someone tries to use it. For dashboards, OEE, anomaly detection,…
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AI Meets UNS: Practical LLM Uses on Industrial Data
Read more: AI Meets UNS: Practical LLM Uses on Industrial DataA few years ago, if you told me we’d be using large language models on top of plant data, I would’ve said: “Cool demo. Not sure it survives contact with a real site.” Now I’m more convinced. Not because LLMs…
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Why i3X Matters for Industrial Data Interoperability
Read more: Why i3X Matters for Industrial Data InteroperabilityIf you’ve spent any time in manufacturing IT, you’ve probably lived through the same story more than once. A machine gets connected. Data flows into a historian or a SCADA system. A dashboard gets built. Everyone is happy for a…
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MCP for IIoT. When “Chat With Factory Data” Became Engineering
Read more: MCP for IIoT. When “Chat With Factory Data” Became EngineeringFor a long time, “chat with your factory data” felt like a demo trick. You know the kind. Someone types “What’s my OEE today?” and a bot answers with a nice sentence. It looks impressive. Then someone asks a real…
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CESMII and I3X at ProveIt! Conference 2026. Making Interoperability Real
Read more: CESMII and I3X at ProveIt! Conference 2026. Making Interoperability RealI have been around manufacturing IT long enough to see the same movie play out. A site wants digital transformation. They buy a few tools. They connect some machines. They build some dashboards. Everyone celebrates for about six months. Then…
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HighByte at ProveIt! Conference 2026. Industrial DataOps in Practice
Read more: HighByte at ProveIt! Conference 2026. Industrial DataOps in PracticeI spent time at ProveIt! Conference in Dallas listening to HighByte walk through a full Industrial DataOps demo. Not a slide deck. Not a future-state animation. A real end-to-end story with messy systems, awkward schemas, regulated constraints, and the kind…
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What I Took Away from ProveIt! 2026. A Reset in Expectations
Read more: What I Took Away from ProveIt! 2026. A Reset in ExpectationsI have been to a lot of manufacturing events over the years. Some are useful. Some are basically a sales funnel with better coffee. This one felt different. What I liked most is that the conference actually tried to prove…
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Data Context in IIoT. Why Raw Numbers Aren’t Enough for Smarter Manufacturing
Read more: Data Context in IIoT. Why Raw Numbers Aren’t Enough for Smarter ManufacturingI’ve spent years deep in large IIoT programs. We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of tags streaming from shop floors to cloud platforms across very different industries: automotive, pharma, high volume, and highly regulated. And there’s one lesson that keeps…
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My Expectations for the ProveIt! Conference 2026
Read more: My Expectations for the ProveIt! Conference 2026I’m heading to ProveIt! Conference in two weeks. February 16–20 in Dallas. It’s practically in my backyard. No flights. No hotels. Just me, my car, and five days of IIoT demos, vendor sessions, and hopefully some useful conversations with people…
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Unified Namespace (UNS) as the Architectural Foundation for IIoT
Read more: Unified Namespace (UNS) as the Architectural Foundation for IIoTIf you want to talk about making factories smarter and more connected, you have to talk about Unified Namespace. I’ve been working with industrial data for more than 20 years, and I’ve seen many architectural patterns come and go in…
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From Shop Floor to Cloud: How Manufacturing Data Moves
Read more: From Shop Floor to Cloud: How Manufacturing Data MovesI’ve spent years watching data travel from shop floors to dashboards. And honestly, most people skip over the messy middle parts. On paper, the sensor-to-dashboard chain looks clean and simple. In real manufacturing environments, it rarely is. If you’ve ever…
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IIoT Gateway vs Edge Computer vs Industrial Router: What’s the Difference?
Read more: IIoT Gateway vs Edge Computer vs Industrial Router: What’s the Difference?People ask me all the time: what’s the difference between an IIoT Gateway, an Edge Computer, and an Industrial Router? And honestly, I get why it’s confusing. Vendors love to mix these terms, and sometimes the same box gets called…