Yet another bunch of big tech firms has made a play for the Internet of Things. This time around the quintet of Amtel, Broadcom, Dell, Intel and Samsung has teamed up to create the “Open Interconnect Consortium”, in a bid to promote a unified standard for IoT.

The consortium spells out its mission as thus: “[We] will seek to define a common communication framework based on industry standard technologies to wirelessly connect and intelligently manage the flow of information among devices, regardless of form factor, operating system or service provider.”

To do so, the group plans to create a new specification and develop an open-source project to ensure interoperability between all kinds of operating systems and devices. Not that it explained how it’s going to go about that, merely stating that “additional technical details will be announced at a later time.”

The Open Interconnect Consortium’s arrival on the scene seems to be a little late – a rival consortium called the Allseen Alliance has been up and running since last year, and only last week it welcomed the all-powerful Microsoft into its fold. It has very similar aims, with its stated goal being “To enable widespread adoption and help accelerate the development and evolution of an interoperable peer connectivity and communications framework based on AllJoyn for devices and applications in the Internet of Everything.”

But are the two groups really pursuing the same goals, or are they a little different? The Open Interconnect Consortium claims its mission sets it apart:

“Today, there are multiple forums driving different approaches to solve the challenge of IoT connectivity and interoperability,” it says in its announcement. “Currently, we don’t see one single effort that addresses all the necessary requirements. The companies involved in OIC believe that secure and reliable device discovery and connectivity is a foundational capability to enable IoT. The companies also believe that a common, interoperable approach is essential, and that both a standard and open source implementation are the best route to enable scale.”

All well and good, but the Allseen Alliance’s spiel argues that “members are collaborating on a universal software framework, based on AllJoyn open source code, that allows devices to autonomously discover and interact with nearby products regardless of their underlying proprietary technology or communications protocols.”

in light of that, the Open Interconnect Consortium’s statement seems a little odd, but we’ll have to wait and see where it goes. It’s certainly starting at a disadvantage though, with just five members on board compared to the fifty-odd members that have already jumped on the Allseen Alliance. The latter boasts some big, big names in tech, including Cisco, LG, Panasonic, Qualcomm, Sharp and Technicolor, as well as the aforementioned Redmond giant.

As the IoT progresses, it’s possible we could see the two bodies collaborate or even merge at a later date. What is curious is that two nominal allies – Intel and Microsoft – have chosen different sides, though given we don’t know much about exactly what either company has planned for IoT, it’s probably too early to read anything into that.

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