NEWBURYPORT, MA – April 7, 2008 - Lenze embedded Softing’s OPC Tunnel middleware product into its L-force products.The L-force industrial PC’s are running Windows CE, representing an excellent, compact solution that meets the real-time requirements of motion applications. However, one drawback of Windows CE is its limited support of Microsoft’s DCOM technology. In fact, starting with Windows CE 6.0, Microsoft will stop including its DCOM technology into this operating system.
For this reason, Lenze’s design team decided against deploying DCOM technology, posing a problem because OPC communications is based on DCOM. Lenze found a solution to this problem by embedding Softing’s OPC Tunnel middleware product into its L-force products. “We are very pleased with the performance of Softing’s OPC Tunnel within our new L-force product family,” said Thomas Maschler, Head of Product Management Automation. “In the past, DCOM configuration issues were the leading cause for support calls. With L-force, we do not see any support calls related to OPC.
This fact demonstrates that by employing Softing’s OPC Tunnel, we achieved our goal to seamlessly and, more importantly, transparently integrate OPC technology into our product line.”Lenze’s design team standardized on Softing’s OPC Tunnel based on the software’s performance and immediate availability for use in a real-time environment under Windows CE .NET. Lenze also factored-in Softing’s extensive experience with embedding OPC technology into industrial components. The OPC Tunnel, part of Softing’s Easy Connect Suite, combines high-performance with a robust and secure communication link between OPC components.
About Softing
In industrial automation, Softing is a specialist for fieldbus technology and has established itself as a world-leading partner for networking automation systems and control solutions. Softing provides customers the key technology to connect devices, controls, and systems with the leading communication technologies. In fieldbus technology, Softing is a world-class expert for FOUNDATION fieldbus, PROFIBUS, and CAN/CANopen/DeviceNet. The company’s wide range of expertise includes solutions for OPC, FDT, and Real-Time-Ethernet protocols such as, PROFINET IO, EtherNet/IP, and Modbus/TCP. Many of the products and services developed by Softing since the company was founded in 1979 have become reference standards throughout the world.
In addition, Softing has established itself as a provider of sophisticated diagnostic tools for fieldbus systems.
