Kepware is the industry-standard OPC server platform developed by Kepware Technologies and now owned by PTC. Its flagship product, KEPServerEX, is software that lets industrial control systems — PLCs, RTUs, sensors, drives — communicate with higher-level software such as SCADA, MES, historians, and OT cybersecurity tools. If your facility has a mix of Siemens, Allen-Bradley, Mitsubishi, and Modbus devices and you need them to feed data into one unified application, Kepware is almost always part of the answer.
This guide answers what is Kepware, what is KEPServerEX, how it works in practice, what to know before pricing it, and how to procure Kepware through an authorized distributor in Singapore, Malaysia, and Vietnam. If you only have 30 seconds: see our KEPServerEX product page or contact our team.
Kepware is a vendor-agnostic industrial communication platform that translates between the proprietary protocols spoken by different PLCs and field devices, and the open OPC UA and OPC DA standards spoken by modern SCADA, historian, and analytics software. Without an OPC server like Kepware, every higher-level application would need a custom driver for every device on the plant floor. KEPServerEX consolidates this into one server with 150+ certified drivers covering virtually every major PLC, building-automation protocol, and SCADA controller family in use today.
KEPServerEX is the actual software product most people mean when they say “Kepware.” It is a Windows-based server application that you install on a plant-floor PC, server, or industrial edge box. Once installed, you configure two things:
The result: one server, one tag database, one set of security policies, instead of many separate device drivers scattered across many applications.
A typical deployment looks like this:
If you are running our Proficy HMI/SCADA or Proficy Historian products, KEPServerEX is the recommended data bridge between those applications and your underlying control hardware. WIN-911 alarm distribution also reads tags directly from KEPServerEX.
One of the most common decisions when configuring Kepware is which OPC standard to expose to client applications. The short answer for any new project: use OPC UA. Here is the practical comparison:
| Concern | OPC DA (Classic) | OPC UA |
|---|---|---|
| Underlying transport | DCOM (Windows only) | TCP/HTTPS, cross-platform |
| Firewall friendliness | Painful (dynamic RPC ports) | Single configurable port |
| Security | None at the protocol level | X.509 certificates, signed and encrypted |
| Future support | Maintenance only | Active development |
Kepware exposes both simultaneously, so you can migrate gradually: keep a legacy DA client running while new applications connect over UA. This is the common pattern in brownfield modernizations.
These capabilities support everything from real-time monitoring and predictive maintenance to OEE tracking, energy management, batch traceability, and Industry 4.0 reporting.
The most common KEPServerEX deployments fall into these sectors:
As Singapore, Malaysia, and Vietnam push forward with smart-manufacturing goals — including Malaysia’s Industry4WRD initiative and Vietnam’s “Make in Vietnam” digital-manufacturing agenda — seamless OT/IT integration becomes critical. Without a unified communication layer, plants risk creating data silos, introducing inefficiencies, and missing out on the benefits of automation and analytics.
Kepware enables data to move efficiently from devices to decision-makers without disrupting ongoing operations. It empowers manufacturers to:
KEPServerEX is licensed by the driver (called “Suites” by Kepware) rather than per tag or per connection. Pricing depends on which protocols you need: a single-driver entry-level deployment is significantly cheaper than a fully loaded multi-vendor plant with the redundancy plug-in and DataLogger add-on. Important to understand before budgeting:
For a current Kepware quotation, including suite recommendations based on your device list, please contact our team. We do not publish price lists publicly because Kepware sizing depends heavily on which drivers and add-ons apply to your plant.
The OPC server market has consolidated significantly. Honest comparison from a distributor’s perspective:
For most industrial automation projects across Southeast Asia, KEPServerEX is the safest choice: it works, system integrators know it, every major SCADA/historian/MES product is certified against it, and PTC continues to invest in the platform.
Kepware is a powerful tool, but its effectiveness depends on correct sizing, configuration, and ongoing support. With regional offices in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Penang, and Ho Chi Minh City, Allied Solutions Global provides hands-on guidance throughout your industrial connectivity journey. Our technical team assists with:
Allied Solutions Global is an authorized Kepware distributor with our regional headquarters at our Singapore office: 23 New Industrial Road #07-06/07, Solstice Business Center, Singapore 536209. We support Kepware licensing, sizing, and integration for Singapore manufacturers across the food and beverage, electronics, semiconductor, marine, and pharmaceutical sectors. For a Singapore-specific Kepware quotation, call +65 6484 4050 or visit our Singapore office page.
For Malaysian manufacturers, our Kuala Lumpur office and Penang office support Kepware deployments across the Klang Valley, the northern industrial corridor, and free-trade zones in Penang. We work with Malaysian system integrators and end users on Industry4WRD initiatives, electronics-sector data collection, and palm-oil / food-processing connectivity projects.
For Vietnam-based projects, our Ho Chi Minh City office in Binh Hoa Neighborhood, Lai Thieu Ward supports Kepware deployments across Vietnamese industrial parks and free-trade zones. Contact our HCMC team for project sizing, local procurement, and on-site engineering support for Kepware and the wider Proficy / OPSWAT / WIN-911 ecosystem.
Kepware is the brand and the company (now part of PTC); KEPServerEX is the flagship product. The names are often used interchangeably. PTC also publishes ThingWorx Kepware Edge for Linux and edge deployments, with a subset of the driver portfolio.
The standard KEPServerEX is Windows-only. PTC offers ThingWorx Kepware Edge for Linux/edge deployments. For most plant-floor deployments, the Windows-based KEPServerEX on a hardened Windows server is still the recommended path.
Yes — Kepware’s Siemens TCP/IP Ethernet driver supports the S7 family including S7-1200, S7-1500, and the legacy S7-300/400, with optimized-block support on the newer CPUs.
Yes, via the IoT Gateway plug-in. KEPServerEX can publish tags to MQTT brokers (AWS IoT, Azure IoT Hub, Sparkplug B brokers, self-hosted Mosquitto). This is the standard pattern for getting plant-floor data into cloud analytics.
It depends entirely on which drivers and add-ons apply to your environment. We do not publish list prices because real-world Kepware sizing varies by an order of magnitude depending on PLC count, vendor mix, redundancy, and add-on selection. Request a quotation with your device list and we will return a sized recommendation within one business day.
Technically yes — KEPServerEX can write directly to SQL databases (DataLogger), publish to MQTT (IoT Gateway), or expose a REST API. But without a SCADA, historian, or MES on top, you have data in transit with nothing consuming it. Most deployments pair Kepware with at least one consuming application.
Kepware itself is a server application with its own attack surface (open ports, OPC UA certificates, Windows host). For production OT environments we recommend pairing it with a dedicated OT cybersecurity stack — OPSWAT MetaAccess OT for endpoint compliance and OPSWAT OTfuse for inline traffic inspection, plus network segmentation between KEPServerEX and the corporate IT network.
If you are scoping a Kepware deployment for a plant in Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, or anywhere in Southeast Asia, the fastest path to a useful quotation is:
For Vietnam-based projects, contact our Ho Chi Minh office directly. For Singapore and the rest of Southeast Asia, our Singapore headquarters is the primary point of contact.
Allied Solutions Global is an authorized Kepware (PTC) distributor across Southeast Asia. KEPServerEX is a registered trademark of PTC Inc.
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