After the successful completion of the above described project phases #1 and #2, there is now an Open Source licensed OPC UA SDK available to be used by industry to create a state-of-the-art OPC UA server that can be certified by OPC Foundation to adhere to the "micro embedded device server" profile. In addition, a PubSub implementation is available that allows using Virtual Local Area Network (IEEE 802.1Q) along with components of Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) such as high-precision time synchronization (802.1AS) and time-aware traffic shaping (IEEE 802.1Qbv) to establish real-time communication via Ethernet.

To further enhance the existing Open Source ecosystem software pool with the goal to make open62541 the single fully fledged state-of-the-art hard real-time successor of the wide variety of former real-time Ethernet communications systems, more features of the software itself and additional software components around the SDK are needed. It therefore was decided to launch phase #3 of the community project. Since it continues to primarily take care of base technologies, it addresses the various target groups (e.g. controller vendors, field device vendors, machine builders, end users) in the same way as before.