The boards of directors of the Fieldbus Foundation and the HART Communication Foundation approved unifying the two groups into a new industry organization dedicated to the needs of intelligent devices and their integration in the world of process automation.

The combined power of both organizations will aim to protect the investments that end users in process automation have made in HART and Foundation fieldbus communication technologies. The mission of the combined organization will be to develop, manage and promote global standards for integrating devices into automation-system architectures, providing functional solutions for process automation suppliers and end users.

The two organizations have a long history of cooperation. For example, they worked together to develop common international standards such as Electronic Device Description Language (EDDL) specifications and Field Device Integration (FDI) technology.

The Foundation fieldbus and HART specifications will continue to exist individually and evolve in the future. Each protocol will retain its own brand name, trademarks, patents and copyrights.