Open Interconnect Consortium releases preview of IoTivity, an open-source framework for its Internet of Things standard
Stephen Lawson / PC World :
Context & Ripple Effects
This release lands at the center of a 2015 land-grab for who defines how IoT devices talk to each other. Weeks earlier, Microsoft and Amazon agreed to publish their IoT APIs on Canonical's Ubuntu Core, and ARM and IBM shipped a starter kit pairing hardware with cloud services — every large player was trying to make its stack the default connective tissue.
By open-sourcing IoTivity, the Open Interconnect Consortium is betting that a free reference implementation spreads its standard faster than licensing one could. That bet paid off organizationally: within a year, many of the same companies behind this effort were among those forming the Open Connectivity Foundation, folding the work into a much broader membership.
First-order effects
- Device makers evaluating OIC's standard now have working open-source code to build against instead of a spec alone, cutting the cost of prototyping compatible devices.
- The preview puts IoTivity in direct competition with the other free-to-adopt stacks shipping that season, including Microsoft's Windows 10 IoT Core preview for Raspberry Pi and Arduino boards.
Second-order effects
- Rivals answer openness with openness: Microsoft and Amazon opening their APIs through Ubuntu Core and ARM plus IBM bundling hardware and services into a starter kit force every alliance to give software away to stay in consideration.
- Once the framework is free, the differentiator shifts from access to trust — a gap the market later addressed when [[a:850544|the Connectivity Standards Alliance launched a globally recognized IoT cybersecurity certification]].
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, fragmented single-purpose consortia consolidate into broad umbrella alliances — the move from OIC-era efforts to the Open Connectivity Foundation is exactly that shape — and competition moves up the stack to certification and security rather than wire protocols.
The trend: IoT connectivity is consolidating from rival vendor frameworks toward broad multi-vendor alliances that give away the protocol layer and compete on certification and security.