Tech giants – Atmel, Broadcom, Dell, Intel, Samsung and Wind River – have come up with yet another initiative dubbed the “Open Interconnect Consortium” or the OIC, with the mission to develop and establish standards and certification and define the connectivity requirements for devices involved in Internet of Things (IoT).
The OIC will focus on improving interoperability and seek to define a “common communication framework” based on the industry standards to connect and manage the “flow of information” seamlessly among the IoT devices of all form factors, operating systems and service providers.
The OIC members said that the first open source code of consortium will focus on smart home and office solutions, with healthcare, automotive and industrial opportunities to follow.
Jong-deok Choi, executive vice president and deputy head of the software R&D centre at Samsung Electronics, insisting that IoT devices should connect and communicate with each other effortlessly, invited other industry leaders, regardless of their background and vertical specialism, to join the OIC team in “defining and embracing a common communications framework” for the IoT.
Doug Fisher, vice president and general manager of the Software and Services Group at Intel, citing number from IDC, said that roughly 212 billion devices will be connected by 2020 as he highlighted the need for IoT standards. Fisher added that the OIC’s platform will establish a “clean” way to connect IoT devices and overcome barriers to authentication mechanisms, security technologies.
Gary Martz, product line manager at Intel, noting that other IoT groups are not focused on security and authentication, said that OIC will share open source code with other groups to establish a common IoT interface. OIC members will work on standards for IoT devices, encompassing a range of technologies including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, ZigBee and NFC.
Open Interconnect Consortium comes just a few months after AllSeen Alliance venture, based on Qualcomm’s rival AllJoyn, was unveiled by Linux Foundation, with similar goals to establish a common software framework for connectivity between devices. AllSeen has over 50 members in its team including Microsoft, LG, Sharp and Panasonic.
Surprisingly, Executive Director of The Linux Foundation, Jim Zemlin, welcoming the OIC announcement, said that it is collaboration and choice that open source is all about and the “Open Interconnect Consortium” comes as yet another “proof point” on how open source can fuel innovation.
