Will we see a single IoT standard emerge?
The advancement of IoT has been swift in the recent years. With new developments in smartphone technology, IoT has gained more ground as it has become easier and more convenient to connect the devices. But still, a common standard for IoT has been missing because of so many players in the market. To reach its full potential, IoT will require a common standard.
Although, many attempts of achieving a common standard for IoT platforms have been made, we are yet to see a wider IoT framework that will enable interconnection. There have mainly been two approaches to form a single standard, AllSeen and OIC. AllSeen focuses on device to device and starts at home extending forward. OIC (Open Interconnect Consortium), on the other hand, was born out of business applicability of IoT extending into customer.
The problem
The greatest bump in the road to interconnected IoT is consortia, foundations and the fact that the stand alone standards are multiplying. These consortia seem to be paradoxically competing to be the most open and interoperable.
A common communications standard is needed by IoT framework so that the information generated by devices can be shared and spread to create new and useful cross-functionality. Both OIC and AllSeen want there to be a single standard, but do not agree with one another.
A single standard solution
A single standard will enable all devices from different IoT platforms to communicate with each other. It will also allow cloud services, including proprietary data cloud services, to communicate with one another more securely and privately. A single standard, perhaps, should be open source so it does not have to rely upon a single vendor to be implemented. However, IoT standard requires a lot of technology, from wireless communications, to data security, to intercommunications with other devices.
According to Craig Lee, director of operations at AT&T Foundry, “In the IoT standards space, we can consider four layers where standards are being worked upon. The first is the application layer, looking at protocols for developing IoT applications. These are being developed in standards bodies such as IETF, OASIS, OMA, and W3C. The second is the service layer developing frameworks for enabling IoT services. These frameworks are being developed by oneM2M, OIC, and AllSeen. The next layer is the network, which is looking at optimizations that support IoT. Finally, there are the access technologies looking to optimize the application and framework layers for use with IoT services and access network specific optimizations. These access optimizations are being developed by 3GPP, IEEE 802.11 and 802.15, Bluetooth SIG, Weightless SIG, and others.”
It is likely that one of these standards would finally be adopted. But there is a bit of foundation fatigue present. It can be frustrating to have several competing IoT standards with the same aims. It will be interesting to see how and when and if a common standard emerges, and whether IoT will be the frontrunner in all businesses.
#BringItOn
I expect gradual convergence. It took almost 20 years for office networking to settle on Ethernet and TCP/IP as the common transport medium, with a lot of polishing up of Ethernet and TCP/IP to handle situations they were not originally designed for. IoT has requirements that are much different from previous networking, so the entire industry has a lot of learning and development to do.
Sales professional, delivering enhanced customer experience and operational efficiencies through IoT
8 年Whilst the arguments for standardisation are strong, standards can not be allowed to stifle innovation
Educator; Electrical Engineer
8 年In 2020, about 30 billion Internet connections are expected, with 85% “things” and 15% human users. It was the opposite in 2000, with 85% of 488 million for human users. I think the market is too big to not have a standard. The question is whether it will be like a software standard, which people upgrade constantly, or like a communication standard, which takes years to upgrade (The 5G discussion is still a hot topic). Maybe a bit of both, depending on which layer we are talking about. Good food for thought.
Between 2015 and 2021, the number of IoT connected devices is expected to grow 23% annually, of which cellular IoT is forecast to have the highest growth rate. Of the 28 billion total devices that will be connected by 2021, close to 16 billion will be IoT devices.
Design Thinking - udvikling af b?redygtige, ansvarlige forretningsmodeller & -projekter - kommunikation, netv?rk & event
8 年No, we probably won't - it's too high-level. Perhaps I should explain what I mean by that... : We've had standards before - the most ubiquitous being such things as phones, records and cassette tapes - but those typically came into being at a *very* low level; they were basically physics, and a tiny bit of interfacing. As soon as we're digital, however, nothing really does anything without layers and layers of interpretation. By way of comparison, if a future civilization finds a vinyl record they'll probably be able to find out how to play it - but if you found an old piece of digital storage it would be completely impossible to discern what all those 1's and 0's had been used for without a key, i.e. the program layers (including OS, libraries, firmware and so on) that were meant to read them. In that realm we're unlikely to see one omnipresent standard. The most likely avenue for success in IoT is that all of these different protocols speak effortlessly to one-another. That, however, is a whole new programming paradigm (which I think will come, eventually).