The Open Connectivity Foundation recently announced that products from BSC Computer GmbH, COMMAX, LG, Haier, Resideo, Sure and Samsung will complete OCF 2.1 certification in 2020, ensuring robust and secure connectivity between devices.
The Trend
Recent research indicates that revenue from the smart home market is expected to grow at an annual rate of 17.6 percent, resulting in a global market volume of more than $141 billion by 2023. As the smart home market continues to rapidly grow, secure interoperability will be key in making the IoT successful.
The Program
The OCF Certification Program helps manufacturers create products that “just work” with other OCF Certified IoT devices regardless of their form factors, operating systems, service providers or transports. OCF’s 2.1 specification, a recognized ISO standards specification, ensures this interoperability is built into all OCF Certified devices.
The OCF supports standardized procedures for bridging to other IoT ecosystems and provide detailed implementations for Bluetooth, EnOcean, Zigbee and Z-wave protocols.
What Does This Mean?
In the near future, smart homes and buildings will have typically over 200 different products improving comfort, security and energy usage. Having all of these powered by mains cables or batteries which need to be regularly changed or re-charged is simply not practical. By introducing the EnOcean energy harvesting wireless standard into the OCF world, BSC Computer has enabled simple addition of multiple ‘peel and stick’ maintenance-free sensors and switches into their smart buildings via the BSC smart secure gateway, a major expansion and improvement of the excellent interoperable OCF eco-system.
The collaboration that occurs within OCF is a meaningful process that contributes to the proliferation of the global smart home industry and dramatically improves end user experience.
OCF brings the global IoT industry a fully interoperable and standardized solution with high-level security.
In simple terms, the world has become too complex and diverse for any one company to be able to meet all different demands of customers. OCF will provide customers with benefits of a seamless and intelligent connected experience. It will leverage standardized OCF Universal Cloud Interface to facilitate open collaboration across industries and to realize the full potential of AI for a truly better life.
The smart home today is anything but smart, there are too many apps and competing communication protocols to make it happen and homeowners are increasingly frustrated. The OCF Universal Cloud Interface standard will greatly simplify and reduce the work associated with IoT Cloud to Cloud communications. By implementing this as an industry standard, we’ll reduce the need for one-off, cloud to cloud connections, streamlining our development work and helping simplify the smart home experience for consumers.
