IoT Standards Group OIC Adds 15 New Members

Interest in standards groups for the Internet of things continues to grow.

A day after the 5-month-old Thread Group announced its membership had passed the 50 mark, another organization, the Open Interconnect Consortium (OIC), said Dec. 17 that 15 vendors—including Hewlett-Packard, GE Software, Lenovo and Siemens—had joined the group, bringing its member total to more than 40.

The rapid growth of the membership list “underscores the importance of the technology we aim to bring to market,” Jong-Deok Choi, executive vice president and deputy head of Samsung’s software R&D center and president of the OIC, said in a statement. “Their participation will help us to ensure our collaboration includes input from key players representing the Internet of things market breadth.”

The Internet of things (IoT)—the growing collection of intelligent devices, systems and sensors that are connecting to the Internet and each other and generating massive amounts of data—is expected to grow rapidly over the next several years. Cisco Systems officials have said that the worldwide number of connected devices and systems—from smartphones, tablets and notebooks to cars, surveillance cameras, home appliances, cars and industrial systems—now stands at about 25 billion, and will grow to 50 billion by 2020. IDC analysts have forecast that IoT revenues will hit $7.1 trillion by that year.

One of the challenges as the IoT grows is enabling the myriad devices to communicate and interoperate with each other, driving the Thread Group, OIC, AllSeen Alliance and ZigBee Alliance—are working to develop specifications for interoperability. For example, the Thread Group is pushing the Thread protocol, while AllSeen is developing a spec based on the AllJoyn code that originally was developed by Qualcomm.

Another group, the Industrial Internet Consortium, is focusing on commercial systems.

“In the Internet of things era, everything—from PCs, smartphones and tablets to home and industrial appliances and new wearable form factors—should effortlessly connect and communicate with each other, regardless of who makes the device,” Choi said in a statement at the time the group was launched.

The OIC was launched in July by Intel, Dell, Samsung and several other vendors, and now counts such heavyweights as Cisco Systems, Acer, Lenovo and MediaTek among its members. Some tech vendors have joined more than one group. For example, Cisco and Lenovo also are AllSeen members, while Atmel is a member of both the OIC and Thread Group.

Interest in standards groups for the Internet of things continues to grow.

A day after the 5-month-old Thread Group announced its membership had passed the 50 mark, another organization, the Open Interconnect Consortium (OIC) said that 15 vendors—including Hewlett-Packard, GE Software, Lenovo and Siemens—had joined the group, bringing its member total to more than 40.

The rapid growth of the membership list “underscores the importance of the technology we aim to bring to market,” Jong-Deok Choi, executive vice president and deputy head of Samsung’s software R&D center and president of the OIC, said in a statement. “Their participation will help us to ensure our collaboration includes input from key players representing the Internet of things market breadth.”

The Internet of things (IoT)—the growing collection of intelligent devices, systems and sensors that are connecting to the Internet and each other and generating massive amounts of data—is expected to grow rapidly over the next several years. Cisco Systems officials have said that the worldwide number of connected devices and systems—from smartphones, tablets and notebooks to cars, surveillance cameras, home appliances, cars and industrial systems—now stands at about 25 billion, and will grow to 50 billion by 2020. IDC analysts have forecast that IoT revenues will hit $7.1 trillion by that year.

One of the challenges as the IoT grows is enabling the myriad devices to communicate and interoperate with each other, driving the Thread Group, OIC, AllSeen Alliance and ZigBee Alliance—are working to develop specifications for interoperability. For example, the Thread Group is pushing the Thread protocol, while AllSeen is developing a spec based on the AllJoyn code that originally was developed by Qualcomm.

Another group, the Industrial Internet Consortium, is focusing on commercial systems.

“In the Internet of things era, everything—from PCs, smartphones and tablets to home and industrial appliances and new wearable form factors—should effortlessly connect and communicate with each other, regardless of who makes the device,” Choi said in a statement at the time the group was launched.

The OIC was launched in July by Intel, Dell, Samsung and several other vendors, and now counts such heavyweights as Cisco Systems, Acer, Lenovo and MediaTek among its members. Some tech vendors have joined more than one group. For example, Cisco and Lenovo also are AllSeen members, while Atmel is a member of both the OIC and Thread Group.