Working towards a common set of IoT standards
Major industry leaders who are invested in the future of the Internet of Things, announced they will unify as the Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF), an entity whose goal will be to help unify IoT standards so that companies and developers can create IoT solutions and devices that work seamlessly together.
The OCF will work towards unlocking the massive opportunity of the future global IoT segment, accelerate industry innovation and help all developers and companies create solutions that map to a single, open IoT interoperability specification.
With OCF specifications, protocols and open source projects, a wide-range of consumer, enterprise and embedded devices and sensors from a variety of manufacturers, can securely and seamlessly interact with one another.
“Unifying IoT standards will allow many startups and entrepreneurs to enter the market effectively. What is happening now reminds me of the early Internet days, when there were too many standards. Smaller companies were waiting to figure out which to rely on before building their services,” said Dr. Hossein Rahnama, founder of contextual mobile platform, Flybits.
“Any type of standardization such as what OCF and the Wi-Fi Alliance are doing will enable startups to enter the IoT software market with more confidence and less risk. We need this, because startups are very good at creating new business ecosystems around components like IoT. It’s no longer about continuing to add features to make better hardware, it’s more about creating a community for building value around IoT services. And I think these standardizations are a step forward for enabling these types of innovative business models and IoT experiences to come to market,” Rahnama told Help Net Security.
The OCF unifies the entirety of the former Open Interconnect Consortium with leading companies at all levels – silicon, software, platform, and finished-goods – dedicated to providing this key interoperability element of an IoT solution.
Paul Paget, CEO at Pwnie Express, believes it’s encouraging to see industry leaders come together and develop open interoperability standards for the Internet of Things.
“Alongside every great technology trend comes a challenging and loosely defined threat vector. With cyber criminals more determined than ever to infiltrate military, government and business networks, a critical component of any IoT-related initiative will be finding collaborative ways for organizations to bolster device detection and protection efforts,” Paget concluded.