The Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF) recently announced the addition of 31 new member organizations including Bose Corporation, Comcast, Fujitsu Limited, Somfy and Tata Consultancy, growing membership to nearly 200 companies dedicated to creating a common IoT standard.
In addition, OCF announced updated functionality to its specification. OCF is an Internet of Things (IoT) standards body that aims to create a specification and sponsor an open source project to connect billions of devices and be able to communicate with one another regardless of manufacturer, operating system, chipset or physical transport.
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.
OCF also announced updates to its specification, and available as standalone, reference implementation code, via the open source IoTivity project, which includes new functionality for developers. OCF plans to have certified products available on the market this year.
Updates include security enhancements, added functionality to the smart home development package, as well as added support for new industries to develop with the specification.
“We’re very excited about the commitment from such prominent industry leaders to work with us to develop a common standard for the Internet of Things,” said Mike Richmond, executive director, Open Connectivity Foundation. “The addition of these new members brings in a breadth of experience and expertise that will further our ability to aid companies in delivering interoperable products to the public.”
The new OIC 1.1 includes smart home bridge device enhancements and clarity to enable certification; support on a sensor device for any resources that indicates sensed values, not just resources that are characterized explicitly as a sensor resource, while supporting new device types including smart lock.
It also offers support for resource usage that is restricted because of regulatory or other regional restrictions; full definition of scheme to support vendor extensions to resource types, resource properties and enumerations, with new resource types such as wearables and control of ‘robot’ devices to better support.
OIC 1.1 enhances resource model to facilitate new resource type development to offer building blocks with which each vertical can define its own resource type with ease.
The security specifications on OIC 1.1 include RAML/JSON finalization; device final state ownership transfer method; common ownership credential for DFS; security levels; resource type versioning; crypto-suite consolidation; and CommitHash removal.
