With the aim of standardizing IoT standards, leading industrial giants have joined forces to form the Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF), just in time for the Mobile World Congress, where the topic will play an important role. The new group brings together representatives of the two largest rival organizations in the field, the Open Interconnect Consortium (OIC) and the AllSeen Alliance. These two groups have in the past advertised their own different ways of seeing connected devices and what they can do together.
So all OIC members including Intel and Samsung are now part of the OCF. The AllSeen Alliance still exists, but with Qualcomm and Microsoft, it has lost at least two of its biggest supporters to the new group. As Qualcomm explained in a blog post , the chip giant wants to work with both organizations to develop a single open standard for IoT . Microsoft announced that Windows devices natively support the OCF standard.
With Cisco and GE Digital, the new consortium is also gaining momentum on the industry side. Other members include CableLabs, home appliance manufacturer Electrolux, and the video and broadband systems-focused telecom equipment group Arris Group. A continuously growing list of members can be found here .
The OCF wants to develop a single specification or at least a common set of protocols and projects for all types of IoT devices. The first OCF-certified products are already expected this year - a sporting goal, but in the light of the Consortium contained manufacturers of IoT chips, software, platforms and products is available. Although it is unlikely that objects as diverse as sensors from the Industrie 4.0 environment will ever communicate directly with intelligent light bulbs used in smart homes. However, generic specifications for each type of IoT scenario could create another ecosystem that drives innovation, lowers development costs, and provides a larger pool of developers for all.
