Netgear And VeriSign Join AllSeen Alliance For IoT Push

Netgear and VeriSign are among nine new companies that have thrown their weight behind the Internet of Things (IoT), after they joined the AllSeen Alliance, one of a consortiums backing different M2M standards.

The AllSeen Alliance announced has increased its membership roll call to 80 companies in total, and 12 sponsored members. The other seven new members include dog hunter, FengLian, ForgeRock, INSTEON, MobilityLab, Organic Response and Quanta Computer.

New Members

The new signings will bring their own expertise to the IoT push. ForgeRock and Verisign for example will join Symantec and other Alliance members “working on ways to address privacy and security in the new era of ubiquitous connected devices.” INSTEON and Organic Response meanwhile are to help with the connected lighting side of things.

“The size, breadth and diversity of the AllSeen Alliance’s membership continues to grow,” said Joe Speed, director, IoT, AllSeen Alliance. “The Alliance includes some of the best-known brands in the world.”

“The inclusion of such a broad range of industry leaders demonstrates the industry’s enthusiasm for rallying around and advancing an open, universal platform for smart homes and businesses,” Speed added.

The alliance was formed in December 2013 and aims to “overcome the interoperability challenges that impede the Internet of Things.” Essentially, the alliance is collaborating on a universal software framework, based on AllJoyn open source code.

In September this year, it was revealed that Sony had joined the Alliance as a ‘Premier Member.’ There are ten other premier members of the Alliance, including LG, Microsoft, Panasonic, Qualcomm, and Sharp.

Competing Standards

Many experts agree that the IoT is a great concept, but it is in need of some standards. Indeed, last year, experts warned that the deployment of Internet of Things could be held back by too many competing standards.

For example in July some leading tech giants created the ‘Open Interconnect Consortium‘ (OIC) to push IoT standards. OIC members include Dell, Intel, Samsung, Broadcom, Atmel and Wind River.

Google meanwhile has its open Nest API, and in July its Nest division formed the Thread Group to create a single set of IoT standards. Its members already include Samsung, ARM, Freescale Semiconductor, Silicon Labs and several smaller companies.

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