AllSeen Alliance merges with Open Connectivity Foundation for the good of IoT

The Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF), sponsor of the IoTivity open source project and AllSeen Alliance, which provides the AllJoyn open source IoT framework, announced that the two organizations’ boards have approved a merger under the OCF name and bylaws. This merger will advance interoperability between connected devices from both groups, enabling the full operating potential of IoT and representing a significant step towards a connected ecosystem.

The newly merged groups will collaborate on future OCF specifications, as well as the IoTivity and AllJoyn open source projects. The expanded OCF board of directors will consist of executives from a wide array of leading companies: AB Electrolux, Arçelik A.S., ARRIS International plc, CableLabs, Canon, Inc., Cisco Systems, Inc., GE Digital, Haier, Intel, LG Electronics, Inc., Microsoft, Qualcomm, Samsung Electronics, and Technicolor SA.

OCF will now sponsor both the IoTivity and AllJoyn open source projects at The Linux Foundation. Both projects will collaborate to support future versions of the OCF specification in a single IoTivity implementation that combines the best of both technologies into a unified solution. Current devices running on either AllJoyn or IoTivity solutions will be interoperable and backward-compatible. Companies already developing IoT solutions based on either technology can proceed with the confidence that their products will be compatible with the unified IoT standard that the industry has been asking for.

The merger is designed to leverage the strengths of each organization. To this merger, the AllSeen Alliance brings its diverse, global membership, proven AllJoyn technology, and millions of AllJoyn enabled products into the market through the AllJoyn Certified program. OCF brings its deep membership roster, formal IoT standards with expertise across multiple vertical markets and cloud-native architecture as implemented within the IoTivity framework. Together, these strengths create an organization that establishes the broad interoperability needed to realize the full market potential for IoT.