Sophia Antipolis, France, 27 July 2016: oneM2M, the global standards initiative for Machine to Machine (M2M) communications and the Internet of Things (IoT), today announced another achievement in establishing a global interconnected society: its next set of official specifications, known formally as Release 2, which will be issued this autumn.
The announcement comes as analyst firm Gartner forecasts that 6.4 billion IoT devices will be in use worldwide in 2016, with that figure set to reach 20.8 billion by 2020.
Emphasising the major role of industrial applications within the IoT, Release 2 introduces 14 additional specifications for the expansion of seamless IoT interconnectivity across multiple sectors, including automotive, healthcare, smart homes and smart cities, and builds upon the stability and reliability of the oneM2M standards previously introduced in Release 1. Notably, it will also feature substantial security enhancements, highlighting oneM2M’s foremost commitment that security and privacy remains intact.
“Interoperability in the IoT is not just a matter of connecting devices but also understanding the data being collected and distributed and reusing it in a secure manner,” said Dr. Omar Elloumi, Chair of the oneM2M Technical Plenary (Nokia corporate CTO group). “This is exactly what the addition of semantic interoperability in oneM2M’s second set of specifications addresses. With so many oneM2M member companies from across the world contributing to Release 2’s development, we are creating the potential for widespread adoption of these specifications.”
The finalisation of Release 2 and today’s oneM2M statement follows announcements by major technology companies detailing recent large-scale investments in IoT technology and products. As such, as IoT devices continue to saturate the digital landscape, a universally accepted set of specifications and protocol will prove indispensable for true interoperability between devices. oneM2M has formed a multi-national coalition of the world’s leading IoT experts from more than 200 companies, with the primary goal of developing and promoting universal standards and specifications for seamless connectivity between IoT devices.