The Open Connectivity Foundation, one of world’s largest iOT bodies has announced that it is taking 68 new member organizations on-board. This newest addition takes the total member strength to well over 300 and has led to the creation of what is possibly the most important entity in iOT.
This rush to become OCF member comes barely a month after OCF and the AllSeen Alliance decided to merge their identities so as to provide a common standard for companies interested in the Internet of things. Among other things, it is OCF’s goal to promote interoperability among connected devices — something which is very important considering that there will be over 25 billion connected devices by 2020.
Here is how the Foundation describes its mission:
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 has also entered into several very important strategic partnerships industry leading organizations such as Thread Group and the Industrial Internet Consortium. OCF has also opened as many as six labs across the globe, where it will assist companies get certification for up and coming products in the iOT domain.
Dr. Matthew Perry, newly appointed president of Open Connectivity Foundation said,
We’re very excited to see the industry’s response to the merger, which has inspired nearly 70 new companies to work with us to develop a common standard for IoT. The addition of these new members makes OCF one of the largest consortiums in the industry, furthering our ability to create open and free IoT standards that allow organizations to provide fully interoperable products to consumers.
OCF also announced two new directors. Anoop Mohan, Vice President of Product, XFINITY Home for Comcast, and Olivier Carmona, Director of Business Development for AwoX, will both serve for a two-year term.