Two industrial communication boards agree to unify

The Fieldbus Foundation board and the HART Communication foundation board have agreed to support merging to create a new industry organization and will complete the membership ballot by the end of summer 2014.

By Foundation Fieldbus July 24, 2014

The Boards of Directors of the Fieldbus Foundation and the HART Communication Foundation have approved unifying the two foundations into one industry organization dedicated to the needs of intelligent devices and their integration in the world of process automation.

The mission of the combined organization will be to develop, manage, and promote global standards for integrating devices into automation-system architectures, providing functional solutions for process automation suppliers and end users. 

The Foundation fieldbus and HART specifications will continue to exist individually. Each protocol will retain its own brand name, trademarks, patents, and copyrights.

The organization will continue development, support, and promotion of the two existing protocols, and will direct the development, incorporation, and implementation of new and overlapping technologies. The name of the proposed organization is not yet finalized.

The next step will be to complete the membership ballot by the end of summer 2014. Following a successful membership vote, legal filings for the creation of a new not-for-profit entity will take place in September 2014. As a final step, it is expected that the new organization offices will be consolidated and located near Austin, Texas, in early 2015.

Foundation Fieldbus

www.fieldbus.org 

HART Communication Foundation

www.hartcomm.org 

– Edited by CFE Media. See more Control Engineering networking stories.