2020 will prove a challenging year for CO-LaN. A new funding model is being worked out by CO-LaN Management Board. Quite a few Associate Members have provided feedback on the proposal, helping the Management Board better shape a final proposal. CO-LaN’s duration is also up for renewal at the end of this year. Everything so far points to a renewal for 5 more years.
2019 has seen CO-LaN bringing up new interface specifications, something which had not happened for more than 10 years. Consequently we were a bit rusty in conducting such a major development but succeeded in releasing Flowsheet Monitoring and Custom Data with Petroleum Fractions looking ahead of us. These releases show that CO-LaN is active and well. But this is challenging CO-LaN in terms of how best to distribute the CAPE-OPEN implementation specifications. The CAPE-OPEN Binary Interop Architecture (COBIA) is also a challenging endeavour both technically and in terms of intellectual property. 2020 will see major progress there too.
Another challenge for CO-LaN, but also a major opportunity, is the collaboration with other Standard Development Organizations like CFIHOS and DEXPI. We are at an early stage here but standardization on data engineering is overlapping with some of what CAPE-OPEN is addressing.
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