Quality-led IoT. With the launch of some new industry groups and a drive from the mobile network operators, we will see more enterprise-grade IoT solutions this year. These enterprise-quality solutions must span the IoT value chain from hardware, connectivity, platform and applications. See value chain below.
I anticipate some of the newly formed industry groups will fuel some of this enterprise-grade focus. Two of the newer IoT groups are for the industrial sector and consumer electronics. For example, the consumer electronics-focused group – AllSeen Alliance — will drive collaboration between technology, application and electronics vendors to create top-notch solutions all speaking the same language. This group includes such heavyweights as Haier, LG Electronics, Panasonic, Qualcomm, Sharp, Silicon Image, and TP-LINK. Other community members to AllSeen include Canary, Cisco, D-Link, doubleTwist, Fon, Harman, HTC, Letv, LIFX, Lite-on, Moxtreme, Musaic, Sears Brand Management Corporation, Sproutling, The Sprosty Network, Weaved and Wilocity.
The mobile network operators are also doubling-down on the quality of their solutions. Offering SLAs and various quality assurances for enterprises has been a mainstay for communications operators for many years. In 2014 I believe we’ll see more focus on quality assurance and management for all pieces of the IoT solution touching the hardware, connectivity, platform and applications layer.