Thomas Burke

OPC Foundation
President & Executive Director
Thomas J. Burke, a founding member and officer of the OPC Foundation was it’s President & Executive Director till Nov 2018 and was the architect for the OPC Data Access Specifications. He has served as the designer and leader for OPC Compliance and all OPC Data Access specifications. His vision is the OPC Unified Architecture, which is a multi-vendor, multi-platform, service-oriented architecture that addresses the unification of all OPC Foundation specifications. It provides the standard for secure, reliable interoperability that integrates the plant floor with the enterprise.
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Mr. Burke has been instrumental in the success of the OPC Foundation, both from a technical and marketing standpoint. The Foundation has created a collaborative community where competitors and consortia can work together to develop the best specifications, technology, certification and process. This has been a driving force for vendors to successfully introduce certified interoperable products into the marketplace.
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The realization of this vision can be measured by the growing level of OPC adoption. The OPC classic specifications have been adopted by approximately 3,500 different companies, resulting in over 22,000 different products. The estimated number of OPC products in use is over 17 million.
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Security is as an absolute requirement of end users and suppliers and the advanced security features built into the architecture is one of the motivating factors for vendors to quickly adopt and bring OPC UA products to market. Mr. Burke has championed the effort to validate the security features in the OPC deliverables.
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Mr. Burke was a senior software architect for Rockwell Automation. He has developed and managed significant hardware & software projects for Rockwell /Allen-Bradley and NCR over his 30-year career. He received a BS in mathematics from John Carroll University and an MS in computer engineering from the University of Dayton.