UniversalAutomation.Org Gains HPE and Clemson

If you’ve been following the slow but steady march toward open industrial automation, here’s a development worth sitting up for. UniversalAutomation.Org (UAO)—the independent nonprofit that’s been championing a vendor-neutral, software-defined future for factory floors—just added two major U.S. names to its growing roster: Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Clemson University.

The announcement, made in late June 2026, marks a notable milestone for the Brussels-based organization. Clemson becomes UAO’s first American academic institution—a public research powerhouse known for churning out the kind of engineers who will actually build the smart factories of tomorrow. HPE, meanwhile, brings serious enterprise heft, with its global footprint in AI, cloud, and networking infrastructure.

Why This Matters

Let’s be honest: industrial automation has long been a world of walled gardens. You buy into one vendor’s ecosystem, and you’re pretty much stuck there—proprietary hardware, proprietary software, and a migration path that looks more like a cliff than a ramp. UAO’s entire reason for existing is to blow that model apart.

Founded in late 2021 by nine companies, the organization now counts more than 110 members spanning industry, academia, and research institutions. Its weapon of choice? The IEC 61499 standard—a framework that decouples automation software from the hardware it runs on. Code written once can be reused across different vendors' equipment, deployed decentrally, and updated without ripping out entire control cabinets. Think of it as the "write once, run anywhere" promise that Java made to developers—but for programmable logic controllers and industrial control systems.

What HPE and Clemson Bring to the Table

For HPE, joining UAO isn't just a ribbon-cutting exercise. According to Thomas Elsholz, Distinguished Technologist for OEM Compute at HPE, the move is a "natural step" that leverages the company's infrastructure and global services as a platform for IEC 61499-based open automation. The payoff? Customers can accelerate innovation, reduce vendor lock-in, and build architectures that won't be obsolete in five years. Given that HPE is already collaborating with Schneider Electric on an "Industrial Automation Modernization as a Service" offering—both companies are UAO members—this isn't just theoretical. It's a commercial reality.

Clemson University brings a different kind of currency: talent. "Clemson University is excited to join UniversalAutomation.Org because it aligns with our vision of preparing the next generation of engineers while advancing research and industry collaboration in smart manufacturing," says Saeed Farahani, an assistant professor and associate director of the Clemson Composites Center. Open automation, he adds, provides a pathway toward more flexible, scalable, and innovative industrial systems. UAO also provides curriculum on the IEC 61499 standard to support teaching—meaning the next wave of engineers won't just hear about open automation in theory; they'll learn it in the classroom.

The Bigger Picture

UAO's approach is distinctive. Unlike industry initiatives that stop at interoperability standards like OPC UA, UAO goes a step further by providing a shared-source runtime execution engine—managed as Guarded Source and free of licensing fees. This creates a genuine separation between hardware and software, meaning the lifecycle of a PLC and the software running on it no longer have to be tied together. Upgrades get simpler. Migrations get less painful. And the whole ecosystem gets more competitive.

In a world where industrial operators lose an average of $11 million annually to legacy system constraints—and large enterprises lose more than $45 million—the case for open, software-defined automation is becoming harder to ignore. UAO President Benoît Thooris put it plainly: "These latest additions demonstrate that together with our members, we are making a significant contribution to the industry's transformation toward open software-defined automation".

With HPE's infrastructure muscle and Clemson's academic firepower now in the fold, that transformation just got a lot more interesting.