Major industry leaders who have invested in the future of the Internet of Things have unified 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.
Via cross-industry collaboration, 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.
The companies are ARRIS, CableLabs, Cisco, Electrolux, GE Digital, Intel, Microsoft, Qualcomm, and Samsung.
Ultimately, 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.
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.
The OCF’s vision for IoT is that billions of connected devices (appliances, phones, computers, industrial equipment) will communicate with one another regardless of manufacturer, operating system, chipset or transport. With the OCF fulfilling this promise, anyone – from a large technology company to a maker in their garage – can adopt the open standards of OCF to innovate and compete, helping ensure secure interoperability for consumers, business, and industry.
About Open Connectivity Foundation
Billions of connected devices (devices, phones, computers and sensors) should be able to communicate with one another regardless of manufacturer, operating system, chipset or physical transport.
The Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF) is creating a specification and sponsoring an open source project to make this possible. OCF will unlock the massive opportunity in the IoT market, accelerate industry innovation and help developers and companies create solutions that map to a single open specification. OCF will help ensure secure interoperability for consumers, business, and industry.
“OIC’s leadership and expansion to OCF is a step forward as these two leading standards bodies are unified to achieve a common set of protocols and certifications for IoT. OCF will help enable developers and industries around consumer, SP, enterprise, industrial to leverage promise of IoT in a scalable and secure manner,” said John Oberon, Vice President, IoT Software
Jan Brockmann, Chief Operations Officer of Electrolux, notes that the Open Connectivity Foundation will create significant value for consumers by paving the way for an interoperable future.
“We’re well on our way to a truly smart home, and this will only happen when appliances can freely communicate with a wide range of products. This important move takes us one step closer to realizing that vision, by widening our existing collaboration initiatives to an even larger number of global brands,” adds Brockmann.
Doug Fisher, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Software and Services Group, at Intel, had this to say: “We believe in a future where all of the devices in our lives are connected to enable ways of living and working that we can’t even imagine today. The only way to unlock the unlimited possibilities for innovation in the Internet of Things is to unify our work with industry peers. This collaboration is an exciting step in that direction.”