Industrial and utility equipment and automation specialist Schneider Electric is one of the first companies to come out swinging for the OPC Foundation’s new unified communications specification. Designed to ensure that Industrial IoT (IIoT) equipment can work in close cooperation, the new architecture is looking to better integrate Operational Technology (OT) and Information Technology (IT) – two worlds have historically remained quite separate. The IT-OT divide is closing, as more companies adopt IoT technologies in their operations, which require integrations with their own IT systems, and likely those of customers and partners. The OPCF is focused on standardizing the ways that different vendors’ IT and OT systems can communicate, in an interoperable fashion, with a particular focus on automation and…