Panasonic is making available for the open source community a set of Internet of Things (IoT) software products used in home monitoring, solar energy and retail applications. It also is increasing its intellectual property contributions to the AllSeen Alliance. The announcement was made at the Embedded Linux Conference in San Jose, Calif., this week.
The company said it plans to make available for royalty-free use its mature and tested device-to-cloud software technology, currently used in home monitoring systems, solar energy and in retail applications. By increasing interoperability and security, Panasonic expects to spur development and introduction of IoT solutions and connected devices by companies, universities and individuals.
"Open sourcing a proprietary technology invites the open source community to evaluate, work on and ultimately improve the software. In a market full of incompatible, proprietary offerings, this initiative brings a powerful tool to developers and equipment makers to help them create what the market wants in the IoT: interoperable and flexible services and applications leveraging data from connected devices and most importantly value to the customer," said Panasonic Corporation of North America CTO Todd Rytting in a press release.
"We are excited to contribute some of our technology and expertise to the effort already underway at the AllSeen Alliance. We hope our IoT initiative will inspire other global companies to contribute intellectual property and ideas to making networks work together through this alliance," he added.
One of the oft-cited obstacles to the IoT is the lack of unified standards and protocols. Several groups, from the AllSeen Alliance to the Open Interconnect Consortium (OIC), are competing for a role in the IoT.
Not everyone subscribes to the belief that the IoT will need a common standard in order to be successful, however. For example, Brian Bedrosian, senior director of the embedded device business in Broadcom's Wireless Connectivity Group, told FierceWirelessTech that he doesn't think there will be a universal standard for the IoT. Rather, there will be a collection of standards and brand ecosystems that are essentially standardized for their brands.
Panasonic points out that it has a history of collaboration through open intellectual property, such as releasing key patents to the public domain to help further development of the radio industry. It serves on the board of the AllSeen Alliance, and it's a Gold member of The Linux Foundation, which hosts the AllSeen Alliance as a Collaborative Project.
For more:
- see this FierceMobileIT story
- see the press release
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