Tech giants pick sides as battle for IoT protocol unfolds

Some of the largest software and hardware makers in the world, including Microsoft Corp., Qualcomm Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and Intel Corp., are choosing sides in a battle over communications standards as the world of connected devices evolves into an Internet of Things. Groups including the Qualcomm and Microsoft-backed AllSeen Alliance, the Samsung and Intel-supported Open Interconnect Consortium, and the U.K.-based HyperCat working group are all looking to define the way consumer gadgets talk to one another as more devices become connected to the Internet. This machine-to-machine communication (M2M) forms the backbone of an Internet of Things (IoT), which International Data Corp. in June predicted would be worth $7.1 trillion US worldwide by 2020, up from $1.9 trillion US in 2013. Evangelists for IoT point to connected devices for the home such as the thermostat designed by Nest Labs, now owned by Google Inc., and smart energy meters that monitor usage and automatically relay that information to utility managers, as well as business applications such as pipelines that can diagnose and draw attention to impending failures, and billboards that can update themselves in real time as evidence of the profound effect the Internet of Things will have on our world. Canada’s largest wireless carriers have each expressed interest in becoming M2M providers, although the actual size of the market has yet to be determined. Companies have worked to define narrow protocols for communication for certain arenas, such as Apple Inc.’s upcoming HomeKit software that will be part of the smartphone manufacturers’ next operating system, yet there remains an absence of an overall communications protocol that could enable all sorts of devices to talk to each other. It is clear that defining the standards for this new market could be very valuable, especially for the earliest adopters, with chipmakers, software companies and hardware vendors all jockeying for the early lead. A swarm of connected fridges that tells farmers how many cows to milk is among the goals for IoT standards groups, but they have different approaches to getting there. “The opportunities and complexities inherent in this major industry transformation are great, and it will take all of us working together to build the future of ubiquitously connected devices,” AllSeen Alliance chairwoman Liat Ben-Zur said in a July 8 news release. AllSeen, which was created in December 2013, announced the addition of four companies to the group, including German engineering giant Robert Bosch GmbH, in an Aug. 13 news release. In an Aug. 12 email, AllSeen Alliance IoT director Joe Speed said his group, which will now represents 62 members including Microsoft, Qualcomm, Panasonic Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc., is working with other organizations and consortiums to come to a universal standard. “We believe that what the industry needs now is more interoperability, not more fragmentation,” he said. “Solutions for connecting devices today are characterized by proprietary approaches that have created one silo after another, resulting in a lot of highly capable devices and systems that just don’t work together.” The AllSeen Alliance open-source communications protocol, AllJoyn, is based on technology developed at Qualcomm and is already present in products such as LG televisions and LIFX smart light bulbs, he said, with source development kits already available for developers to adopt the standard. “The code used in the AllSeen Alliance’s project has been open source from the beginning,” he said. “As has been shown dramatically with Linux and other open-source projects, open source is the ideal, neutral staging area for collaboration and innovation.” Speed said his group’s “advanced code base, commercial traction and strong support from so many different members” will help them define the M2M standards and get products into the hands of consumers. Speed emphasized that the AllSeen products are already on the market, and that the group was more than just a “press release and a home page.” Speed said the software works on every major consumer platform as well as embedded systems and includes the latest security features “including elliptical curve cryptography Symantec, Red Bend.” As the AllJoyn project is open source, its software is freely available to be modified and distributed by developers. “Openness, collaboration and vibrant developer communities have proven to accelerate new technologies, speed up adoption and create better software,” Speed added. “When everyone jointly develops and uses the same freely available code, companies can develop innovative services on top of it and get to market faster.” The Open Interconnect Consortium (OIC), a project of Samsung and Intel as well as other companies including chipmaker Broadcom Corp. and PC maker Dell Inc., said in a release, when its open-source solution was announced in July, that it is best placed to help developers bring their products to market. Russ Castronovo, director of product communications at Broadcom, said the six-member OIC is working on a "genuinely open standard" to define interactions between all types of devices. "By open, it means that multiple companies can not only be a member of it but can contribute," he said in a phone interview. “People can take it in whatever direction they want to go. They have a forum to participate in so that whenever they change anything or come up with a new idea, they have a place to engage.” Castronovo said the AllSeen Alliance does not live up to the promise of open development in part because Qualcomm originally developed the AllJoyn protocol on which it relies. “The specification that says the de facto standard is built on this technology, that sort of flies in the face of open,” he said. Qualcomm has released the AllJoyn code as open source through the Linux Foundation, which now manages its development. The OIC is working on drawing up guidelines and bylaws for its membership to be released this month, Castronovo said, adding that the group was intent on growing its membership and releasing its first code as soon as possible. The need for IoT standards is clear, Castronovo said, which is why the OIC was founded. “There isn't anything that goes across different types of components,” he said. “The end user wants to be able to buy two separate devices and have a fair degree of confidence that they're going to work together.” Castronovo said there is nothing preventing devices from using multiple protocols to communicate, though once you add complexity to the system there is more potential for failure. "There's nothing saying particular technology standards are incompatible," he said. "You just want to be able to assure people that their devices will work as they should." Castronovo said that, regardless of their approach, the different standards bodies are all working to a common goal, and that developers and manufacturers want to be selling their products to as many people as possible. "Everybody wants this market to grow," he said. "Everybody across all the standards bodies, and the reason they exist, is to make sure this technology and this vision continues forward." A third IoT standards body was announced in June, when a consortium of more than 40 companies from the United Kingdom put forward HyperCat. The protocol is meant to “allow machines to work together over the Internet and for applications to discover and make sense of data automatically without human intervention,” according to a June 27 press release. The promise of HyperCat, which was developed with funding from the U.K. government’s Technology Strategy Board, is similar to that of the AllSeen Alliance and the OIC. “HyperCat has been designed to move us from the Internet of Silos to the Internet of Things,” Pilgrim Beart, CEO of IoT startup 1248 Ltd., said in the release. “Previously, applications were vertically-integrated, working only with specific services, which confines data to narrow vertical silos. HyperCat enables apps to discover data across all services, freeing machines from the human programmer bottleneck and allowing a many-to-many relationship to develop, which is the key to IoT.” In the release, the HyperCat group said “major companies” including semiconductor maker ARM Holdings PLC, International Business Machines (IBM) Corp. and BT Group PLC, as well as universities such as the University of Birmingham and Surrey University, helped develop the technology. The protocol is already in use at ARM, according to the release. “We are using HyperCat at our Cambridge headquarters to share data such as office occupancy, energy use and even car-park lighting between different applications,” Amyas Phillips, IoT research entrepreneur at ARM, said in the release. “By linking our infrastructure in real time, we are reducing our energy costs and generating other information including external temperature data that others can use. This is a research project but it has proven tangible benefits that consumers and enterprises can gain from a more connected world.” — With reporting by Peter Henderson at phenderson@thewirereport.ca and editing by Derek Abma at dabma@thewirereport.ca

Tech giants pick sides as battle for IoT protocol unfolds

Broadcast | August 18, 2014

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Tech giants pick sides as battle for IoT protocol unfolds

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