Is this the most important development yet?

A new consortium has just been set up that seeks to define the connectivity requirements needed to ensure the interoperability of billions of devices projected to come online over the coming years – from PCs, smartphones and tablets to home and industrial appliances and new wearable form factors.

If the results of its labours come to positive fruition, this could be one of the most important developments to occur since the cloud emerged, as the core benefits of the cloud – interoperability and collaboration between any and all applications and services, and by definition the devices on which they run – are the keys to an information management and utilisation environment whose potential can only be imagined at the moment.  

Known as the Open Interconnect Consortium, it intends to deliver a specification, an open source implementation, and a certification program for wirelessly connecting all such devices. The first iteration of the code will target the specific requirements for smart home and office solutions, with more use case scenarios to follow.

The launch members of the Consortium include a good collection of big name industry players, including Atmel Corporation, Broadcom, Dell, Intel, Samsung, and Wind River. They are joining forces to focus on defining a common communications framework based on industry standard technologies to wirelessly connect and intelligently manage the flow of information among personal computing and emerging IoT devices, regardless of form factor, operating system or service provider.

Member companies will contribute software and engineering resources to the development of a protocol specification, open source implementation, and a certification program, all with a view of accelerating the development of the IoT. The OIC specification will encompass a range of connectivity solutions, utilising existing and emerging wireless standards. It  will be designed to be compatible with a variety of operating systems.

Leaders from a broad range of industry vertical segments – from smart home and office solutions to automotive and more – will participate in the program. This will help ensure that OIC specifications and open source implementations will help companies design products that intelligently, reliably and securely manage and exchange information under changing conditions, power and bandwidth, and even without an Internet connection.

The first OIC open source code will target the specific requirements of smart home and office solutions. For example, the specifications could make it simple to remotely control and receive notifications from smart home appliances or enterprise devices using securely provisioned smartphones, tablets or PCs.

Possible consumer solutions include the ability to remotely control household systems to save money and conserve energy.

In the enterprise, employees and visiting suppliers might securely collaborate while interacting with screens and other devices in a meeting room. Specifications for additional IoT opportunities including automotive, healthcare and industrial are expected to follow.

“Open source is about collaboration and about choice. The Open Interconnect Consortium is yet another proof point of how open source helps to fuel innovation,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director of The Linux Foundation. “We look forward to the OIC’s contribution in fostering an open environment to support the billions of connected devices coming online.”

Additional member companies including other leading appliance and device manufacturers, service and solution providers, chipset manufacturers and more are expected to join OIC in the coming months.

“The explosion of the Internet of Things is a transformation that will have a major impact on our power to do more through technology. Having a connectivity framework that is open, secure and manageable is critical to delivering the foundational elements of that transformation,” said Glen Robson, vice president and CTO for Client Solutions at Dell. “Consumers and businesses alike will need a strong base upon which to build the vast array of solutions enabled by a global Internet of Things. From our earliest days, Dell has embraced industry standards as a means to bring the best technology solutions to our customers, and the Open Interconnect Consortium is very much aligned with this model.”