TECHNOLOGY

Big Tech Firms Divided In IoT Standards Battle

BY MICHAEL PERRAULT, INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

06:16 PM ET

Tech companies have formed groups that are developing competing standards for the Internet of Things, with Intel and Qualcomm among those on opposite sides.

Two groups are among the most prominent in a competing technology standards fight, though many, mostly complementary, efforts are underway in this crucial arena.

The Open Interconnect Consortium — which includes Intel (NASDAQ:INTC), Samsung Electronics and General Electric (NYSE:GE) — announced its "IoTivity" open-source standards project last month. It aims to create a software framework to enable billions of smart devices to find each other and work together. Certified IoT devices could begin to reach the market by December.

Data analytics is a fast-growing market as companies try to make sense of their ever-rising volume of data.

Data analytics is a fast-growing market as companies try to make sense of their ever-rising volume of data. View Enlarged Image

The AllSeen Alliance — including Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Sony (NYSE:SNE) — unveiled its "AllJoyn Gateway Agent" open-source software framework at last month's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Its open-source standard, based on Qualcomm technology, is designed to connect devices regardless of brand, platform, operating system and other factors.

These two efforts mark a "war" between chipmakers Intel and Qualcomm, says Dan Hutcheson, CEO of VLSI Research.

"Here you have the king of the cloud, Intel, vs. the king of connectivity, Qualcomm," Hutcheson said. "Intel has dominated the PC compute space. Qualcomm has dominated the mobile space."

Chipmakers, along with software and other companies, are positioning themselves to have a say in defining connectivity requirements and ensuring interoperability of the billions of devices — appliances, vehicles, wearables, smart sensors, databases, cameras and other things — that are quickly connecting and communicating with one another.

The goal is to come up with de facto technology standards for linking home appliances, wearables and other devices that often haven't been connected before.

The nonprofit Linux Foundation, which hosts a variety of collaborative projects emphasizing code development, is helping both groups manage their software-development efforts.

Enabling devices and machines to effectively communicate is expected to unleash a new world of technology innovation, says Jim Zemlin, Linux Foundation's executive director.

"Open-source software and collaborative development are the building blocks to get us there," Zemlin said.

Other IoT standards efforts also are underway, led by groups such as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Industrial Internet Consortium and The Thread Group, which is backed by Google's (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Nest Labs, ARM Holdings (NASDAQ:ARMH), Freescale Semiconductor (NYSE:FSL) and others. Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), too, is said to be working on smart-home standards.

IoT To Hit $1.7 Trillion In 2015

IEEE officials say most standardization efforts are confined to very specific vertical markets and represent islands of disjointed and often redundant development.

The stakes are huge. Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO) estimates there will be 50 billion IoT-connected devices by 2020. IDC forecasts $1.7 trillion in IoT spending this year, rising to $3 trillion by 2020.

"You're talking about a new market that at the end of the day is going to be half again as big as the combined PC-mobile market," Hutcheson said. "You can see why everyone puts so much focus on it.

"They know that 10, 20 years down the road, this stuff is going to be making $50 billion, $100 billion worth of revenue for chip guys. It'll be five times that for the electronics companies. It reminds me of 1995, just as the Internet was taking off."

Among questions for the nascent IoT is how all the billions of things, made by different companies across multiple industries with varying technologies and components, will work together.

Connected devices now use multiple, often incompatible standards. Analysts say high-quality standards will help both consumers and businesses. The 802.11 radio protocol, for instance, enables interoperability for Wi-Fi devices.

Oleg Logvinov sees the goal of establishing a standard as taking the many discrete communications, processing, programming and other protocols and approaches now competing and turning them into a single, unified approach to develop IoT's underlying infrastructure.

Complex? Just consider the name of the entity he chairs: the IEEE P2413 Standard for An Architectural Framework for the Internet of Things Workings Group.

"Any major technological shift — and the IoT may be among the most significant in history — starts with islands of innovation," said Logvinov, who is also director of special assignments at chipmaker STMicroelectronics (NYSE:STM). "It's common for various groups to form industry alliances, where members synergistically accelerate the progress that was already started by like-minded companies.

"But for the islands of innovation to become a vast land mass of the future technological landscape, these early activities have to transform into global standards enabling the economy of scale and vibrant ecosystems."

Privacy, Security Key Goals

The Open Interconnect Consortium's 50-plus company members represent various fields and bring expertise crucial to its mission of "defining the connectivity requirements and ensuring interoperability of the billions of devices that will make up the emerging Internet of Things," consortium President Jong-Deok Choi said.

The group wants companies and individuals to take a look at its "preview" IoTivity framework, contribute and provide feedback. The consortium is also developing a product certification program.

Mark Skarpness, chairman of the consortium's IoTivity Steering Group and director of embedded software at Intel's Open Source Technology Center, envisions creating one IoT foundation that can be broadly used.

"Think of it as the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) defining standard for how the Web works," Skarpness said.

AllJoyn Wants All In

Art Lancaster, chairman of the AllSeen Alliance Gateway Working Group, says the alliance's 100-plus member companies envision an AllJoyn standard that gives consumers control over all the devices and their data, with assurances of privacy and security.

"The AllJoyn Gateway Agent is the industry's first standard way to connect IoT devices and applications with such confidence," Lancaster said.

Thread Group is working on a networking protocol for lower-power devices to securely communicate in homes based on a type of chip already on the market, Chris Boross, president of the group, said in an October press release.

"Thousands of companies have already expressed interest in Thread, and we look forward to seeing how they will use Thread technology to build the next generation of the connected home," Boross said then.

The Industrial Internet Consortium, which includes AT&T (NYSE:T), General Electric, IBM (NYSE:IBM) and Intel, is working to recommend blueprints that outline how to build IoT systems in industrial contexts. IIC says it won't set standards but will work with standards bodies to ensure technologies work across business sectors.

"The goal of the Industrial Internet Consortium — from the very beginning — has been to bring large industry, small industry, academia and nonprofits together to discover the future direction of the industrial Internet," said Richard Soley, a member of IIC's steering committee.

A group based in France called oneM2M on Wednesday issued 10 technology standards designed to optimize machine-to-machine connectivity and provide building blocks for a foundation platform for IoT devices and applications.

OneM2M says its "Release 1" standards use proven protocols to let applications communicate across industries. Its the first step in a process to make "the whole experience of using M2M much easier for everyone," Omar Elloumi, group chairman and head of Alcatel-Lucent's (NYSE:ALU) M2M and Smart Grid Standards unit, said in a release.

OneM2M members include Adobe Systems (NASDAQ:ADBE), Broadcom (NASDAQ:BRCM), Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ) and seven standards organizations

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