Thread Group, Open Connectivity Foundation Collaborate on Connected Home

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In-brief: The Thread Group and the Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF) announced that the two alliances will be working together to “advance the adoption of connected home products.”

In the crowded field of emergent IoT  standards, there’s been a bit of consolidation, at least in the arena of connected (“smart”) home products. Last week, The Thread Group and the Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF) announced that the two alliances will be working together to “advance the adoption of connected home products.”

The two groups note that they share many of the same members. The Thread Group, which was launched in July, 2014,  counts ARM, Freescale, Google’s Nest, Qualcomm and Samsung as supporters.  OCF, which launched in February of this year, also counts Samsung and Qualcomm as members in addition to Microsoft, Intel and others.

Companies who belong to both groups will benefit from the liaison, as the groups work toward developing and promoting inter-operable standards for use in connected home products.

From a joint statement:

“To help the internet of things realize its full potential, companies across the product development spectrum – including silicon, software, platform, and finished-goods ­- must ensure interoperability across common technology areas. The organizations will work together to ensure that OCF’s application layer will be fully compatible with Thread’s low-power, secure and scalable IPv6-based wireless mesh network layer.”

“Thread Group members identified and prioritized OCF as a strategically important application layer to run over the Thread wireless mesh network,” noted Thread Group president, Grant Erickson. “In order for consumers to put their faith in the connected home, their experience must be simple, reliable, and effortless. This agreement takes us one step closer to our common goal of ensuring that consumers will have smart home devices that seamlessly work together out of the box, regardless of their brand or function.”

[Read more Security Ledger coverage of Internet of Things standards here.]

Source: The Thread Group and Open Connectivity Foundation Create Liaison Agreement to Increase Application Connectivity and Choice in Connected Home | Business Wire

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