Two years ago, controls industry leaders came together at BuilConn to launch oBIX, an initiative to bring control systems to the enterprise by leveraging the best practices of the data center. In the IT world, innovators were no longer building bigger systems, but were instead developing approaches to orchestrate many, many, independent systems. Monolithic, single purpose systems tend to be inflexible and brittle in the face of change. Systems built by dynamically federating components from independent systems remain nimbler than the monolithic systems, better able to adapt to changing requirements, and operate more effectively across corporate boundaries.
This revolution was driven in part by near-ubiquitous adoption of XML. Because XML is self-describing and readable, interface problems could be resolved quickly. This revolution had many names, from service oriented architecture (SOA) to grid computing. A key outgrowth of XML adoption is the widespread adoption of Web services, using XML to send messages between systems. The most broadly adopted protocol for XML messages is SOAP. Another key component of this revolution was directory enabled networking, wherein organizationally aware security permeated the fabric of systems. As these security systems spanned organizations, it grew into Federated Identity Management, wherein a single user’s identity spanned the system and organizational boundaries.