April 27, 2009 - The Board of Directors of the FDT Group approved a new project for evolving FDT Technology at their last meeting in Orlando. This project has been initiated with the goal to evolve the current FDT Technology to meet user feedback and requirements. It is called FDT2.0. As it is an evolutionary project concept, improvements will be launched to the market step-wise.
This will shorten the time-to-market and allow the development of a migration strategy along the chain of evolutionary steps. “Digital field instruments are becoming increasingly powerful and the end users want us to provide products based on a technology that can handle this increasing functionality today.”, announced Hartmut Wallraf, Chairman of the Board of FDT Group, and continues: “The FDT Group has realized this growing demand of field device integration into software applications such as control systems and asset management systems with the FDT Technology.” Flavio Tolfo, Managing Director of the FDT Group adds: “It is the FDT Group’s responsibility to evolve FDT Technology to respond to end-user’s needs in a changing market environment.
Investment protection and life time support of products in use is one of the highest priorities of end users and manufacturers today.” Consequently, FDT2.0 shall support the integration of FDT1.x components. The IT Technology supporting FDT is evolving continuously.
End users and developers need to leverage the latest advances (.NET, WinForms, etc). Therefore the FDT Technology needs to be extended for these next evolutionary technology steps. In the interest of users of FDT Technology the FDT Group commits clearly to continue evolving FDT, while also actively supporting the FDI initiative to ensure maximum compatibility with a solution for device integration that should be adopted in the future.
About the FDT Group AISBL
The FDT Group AISBL is a non-profit corporation consisting of over 70 leading worldwide companies active in process and factory automation. The major purpose of the FDT Group is to provide an open and non proprietary interface for the integration of field devices with engineering, automation and asset management systems. In this environment, end users, manufacturers, universities and research organizations are working together to develop the technology, provide development tools, support and training, coordinate field trials and demonstrations, and enable product interoperability.
