AllSeen Alliance merges with Open Connectivity Foundation

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 their boards 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 merger is designed to leverage the strengths of each organisation.

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 companies, namely AB Electrolux, Arcelik, Arris International, CableLabs, Canon, Cisco Systems, GE Digital, Haier, Intel, LG Electronics, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Samsung Electronics, and Technicolor.

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 platform. Current devices running on either AllJoyn or IoTivity products will be interoperable and backward-compatible. Companies already developing IoT products 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.