Press Release - Karlsruhe / 25. November 2025
Many companies rely on the open62541 implementation of the OPC UA standard for industrial communication. With the spin-off of o6 Automation GmbH from Fraunhofer IOSB, the path is now clear for professional support for users of open62541—particularly in the context of the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA). And the founders’ ambitions go further, as reflected in their slogan “For Future Industry.” With OPC UA as a key technology, industrial automation is to be made future-proof. To this end, o6 Automation GmbH is releasing o6\Python: OPC UA for the Python programming language, based on the proven foundation of open62541.
The founders of o6 Automation GmbH, Dr. Julius Pfrommer and Andreas Ebner, are the core developers of the open-source library open62541. This OPC UA implementation, written in the C programming language, is used in the products of major automation vendors. With the latest release v1.4, an example server based on open62541 was also certified by the OPC Foundation for the “Standard Server 2017” profile. “Thanks to many years of work on open62541, we know the software and the underlying OPC UA standard inside out, which makes us the obvious partner for professional support, consulting, custom development, and training,” says Julius Pfrommer.
“CRA-ready” support and services for commercial users
In the past, there have already been numerous collaborations with professional users of open62541. With the Cyber Resilience Act, however, the requirements for using software libraries in commercial products have increased significantly once again. Obligations for vendors include risk analysis, management processes for reporting and remediating security vulnerabilities, documentation requirements for the development process, and much more. By founding o6 Automation, commercial users now receive the necessary support to meet these requirements. Nevertheless, open62541 will retain its character as an open-source project—safeguarded by the worldwide distribution of copyright across several hundred contributors to the software source code, as the two founders emphasize. At the same time, they also plan to offer their own commercial products based on open62541.
“We bring AI very close to industrial systems”
The first proprietary product of o6 Automation is o6\Python. “With this, we are bringing the first OPC UA implementation for Python to market that is suitable for critical use,” says Andreas Ebner. In times of a shortage of skilled workers, this is more than just a comfort factor: Python is the most widely used programming language and opens up entirely new developer pools for automation applications. But the most important argument is that data scientists and AI experts mostly use Python. “We bring Python very close to machines and plants in an industrial context, which creates new possibilities for integrating AI solutions.”
All inquiries can be sent by email directly to contact@o6-automation.com.
Further information: www.o6-automation.com
The German version of this press release can be found at https://www.iosb.fraunhofer.de/de/presse/presseinformationen/2025/ausgruendung-o6-automation-open62541-cra-ready-python-unterstuetzung.html.