Implementing Unified Namespace (UNS) with Barbara

By David Puron CEO and Co-founder of Barbara.

If you’re in an industry that relies on distributed assets, whether it’s manufacturing, power distribution, or water treatment, you know the struggle. Data silos make it nearly impossible to get real-time insights, slowing down decision-making and efficiency.

Take a global pharmaceutical company, for example. With hundreds of facilities and warehouses worldwide, each packed with production lines, storage units, and various systems, communication becomes a tangled mess. Point-to-point integrations might work for a while, but as the complexity grows, they become unmanageable. This is exactly where Unified Name Spaces (UNS) step in, offering a game-changing approach to industrial data management.

What is a Unified Name Space (UNS)?

Think of UNS as the backbone of a modern industrial data strategy. Instead of scattered data streams across different systems, UNS provides a Single Source of Truth, a structured, scalable way to centralize and access real-time information. It enables seamless communication across machines, sensors, and enterprise applications, ensuring that decision-makers get the data they need, exactly when they need it.

The beauty of UNS lies in its structured data hierarchy, often following ISA-95 standards (e.g., Site/Area/Line/Zone/Asset). This means any system or operator can effortlessly query and retrieve specific data, regardless of where it resides.

However, while the concept is simple, implementation can be challenging, especially when dealing with legacy equipment, integration complexities, and cybersecurity risks. ?That’s where Barbara comes in.

How Barbara’s Edge Platform Makes UNS a Reality and Super Powers It?

Over the past eight years, our team of industrial, telecommunications, and cybersecurity experts has built a platform designed to tackle these challenges head-on.

Barbara’s Edge Platform makes real-time data acquisition, processing, and security seamless, enabling industries to deploy UNS without the usual roadblocks.

Here’s how we do it:

1. Breaking Down Data Silos: Seamless Industrial Data Acquisition

One of the biggest hurdles in UNS adoption is collecting data from legacy machines, PLCs, and sensors that were never designed for interconnected digital ecosystems. Barbara solves this with a vast library of industrial protocol connectors, covering over 90% of industrial equipment out there, whether it communicates via TCP/IP, Serial Protocol, or proprietary vendor solutions.

Beyond just connectivity, Barbara’s Edge Relational and Non-Relational High-Performance Databases provide local data storage and processing, which means:

• Reduced latency by processing data right at the edge.
• Lower bandwidth costs by filtering unnecessary data transmissions.
• More resilience since operations continue even when the network goes down.

This approach results in a highly responsive and scalable UNS that optimizes industrial data flow for real-time operations.

2. Real-Time Messaging: MQTT- Powered Connectivity

At the core of UNS is secure, efficient data distribution, and that’s where MQTT comes in. Barbara’s platform offers enterprise-grade MQTT brokering, ensuring real-time, structured data flow across your entire operation.

Unlike traditional brokers, we take it a step further with:

• End-to-end encryption (individual certificates per device for authentication).
• Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) for granular security policies.
• Optimized message handling for large-scale industrial deployments.

Barbara also supports #MQTT Sparkplug, a purpose-built protocol for industrial automation that ensures:

• Stateful messaging to keep devices and apps synchronized.
• Structured payloads for standardized data formatting.
• Optimized bandwidth usage for efficient data transmission.

3. Connecting Everything: Industrial-Grade Network Compatibility

A UNS is only as good as its connectivity. Barbara supports an extensive range of wired and wireless industrial protocols, including:

• Short-range: Ethernet, RS-232, RS-485, Industrial Wi-Fi.
• Long-range: LoRaWAN, 4G/5G for secure remote asset integration.

Capable of running in more than 50 industrial gateways and virtualization devices models, Barbara makes it easy to deploy UNS across diverse infrastructures with different ruggedization and connectivity requirements, from factory floors to remote substations and subfloor mining spots.

4. Cybersecurity at the Core

In an era where industrial environments are prime targets for cyber threats, security isn’t optional, it’s essential. Barbara’s platform is built for security from the ground up, following IEC-62443 standards and implementing advanced cybersecurity features such as:

• End-to-end encryption to protect data in transit.
• Zero-trust architecture, enforcing:

Role-based access control (RBAC).

Secure authentication with least-privilege policies.

• Edge-based anomaly detection to identify and mitigate threats in real time.
• Network segmentation, ensuring no incoming open ports to OT infrastructure, minimizing attack surfaces.

5. Flexible Deployment: Edge, Cloud, or Hybrid

Every organization has different needs, so Barbara supports on-premise, cloud, and hybrid deployments.

Our platform seamlessly integrates with industry-standard tools like Ignition Edge, Grafana, AVEVA Connect, OSI Pi, AWS IoT, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and more, ensuring that your data flows where it needs to, without roadblocks.

Bringing UNS to Life with Barbara’s Edge Platform

Let’s talk about what a Unified Namespace (UNS) looks like in practice.?The architecture below allows a seamless flow of data with common structures, from industrial field devices all the way to enterprise applications, without the usual complexity and bottlenecks.?

Built on Barbara’s Edge Platform, this design simplifies and standardizes real-time industrial communication.

It integrates MQTT Sparkplug, Ignition, InfluxDB, Node-RED, and Grafana with legacy equipment and traditional industrial software, ensuring that data is not just available, but also structured, accessible, and actionable.

Here’s how it works:

• Field devices, sensors, PLCs, and controllers are regularly polled by Barbara’s Data Connector containers.
• The data flows to edge nodes, where it’s processed via powerful apps such as Node Red, stored, and visualized in real time.
• Everything is neatly labeled and structured using a unified notation, making it easy to access via a hierarchy of message brokers and subscription topics.

And the best part? Scalability is built-in. All of these components are available in the Barbara Marketplace, ready for remote deployment and configuration, making it easier than ever, for large enterprises to implement and expand a future-proof UNS strategy.

Real-World Impact

Barbara’s Edge Platform is already helping industries worldwide unlock the full potential of UNS.

In the energy sector, we’ve been closely working with DSOs (Distributed Service Operators) for substation asset virtualization, where the platform captures and processes real-time data from line cells and fault pass detectors.

By integrating this data into a UNS framework, multiple use cases are enabled, including early anomaly detection, fraud detection, and energy flexibility optimization.

In manufacturing, we have facilitated process optimization by deploying predictive models, leading to fuel savings in operations. The ability to structure and distribute this data within a UNS-like architecture ensures that factory components and enterprise systems can access and act on insights in real-time.

And we have been leveraged in water management, where real-time access to data from hundreds of treatment plants worldwide has reduced the use of reactive chemicals in desalination plants.?

Welcome to the Future of Industrial Data

The days of struggling with disconnected systems and data silos are over.

With Barbara’s Edge Platform, organizations can deploy a secure, scalable, and future-proof UNS that ensures real-time insights, seamless interoperability, and enterprise-wide efficiency.

Ready to take the next step? Learn more at and discover how UNS can transform your industrial data strategy.