AllSeen Alliance Technology Leaders to Advance "Internet of Everything"

SINGAPORE, Dec 12 (Bernama) -- Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organisation dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux and collaborative development, has announced the formation of AllSeen Alliance, the broadest cross-industry consortium to date to advance adoption and innovation in the "Internet of Everything" in homes and industry. In a statement released Thursday, it said the Internet of Everything is based on the idea that devices, objects and systems can be connected in simple, transparent ways to enable seamless sharing of information and coordinated and intelligent operations across all of them. As no single company can accomplish the level of interoperability required to support the Internet of Everything and address everyday, real-life scenarios, a united, pan-industry effort is needed to deliver new experiences to consumers and businesses. The AllSeen Alliance looks to expand upon the "Internet of Things," which Gartner predicts will add US$1.9 trillion to the global economy by 2020, to include more functionality and interactions across various brands and sectors such as the connected home, healthcare, education, automotive and enterprise. Founding members of the AllSeen Alliance include some of the world's leading consumer electronics manufacturers, home appliances manufacturers, service providers, retailers, enterprise technology companies, innovative startups and chipset manufacturers. Premier level members include Haier, LG Electronics, Panasonic, Qualcomm, Sharp, Silicon Image and TP-LINK. Community members 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. Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation, said: "Open source software and collaborative development have been proven to accelerate technology innovation in markets where major transformation is underway. "The AllSeen Alliance represents an unprecedented opportunity to advance the Internet of Everything for both home and industry. We are very happy to host and help guide this work," he said. Members of the AllSeen Alliance will contribute software and engineering resources as part of their collaboration on an open software framework that enables hardware manufacturers, service providers and software developers to create interoperable devices and services. The initial framework is based on the AllJoyn(tm) open source project, which was originally developed by and is being contributed to the Alliance by Qualcomm Innovation Center, Inc. (a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated), and will be expanded with contributions from member companies and the open source community. Products, applications and services created with the AllJoyn open source project can communicate over various transport layers such as Wi-Fi, power line or Ethernet, regardless of manufacturer or operating system and without the need for Internet access. The software runs on popular platforms such as Linux and Linux-based Android, iOS and Windows, including embedded variants. The initial codebase is available on the website for developers to access and begin evaluating at http://www.allseenalliance.org. -- BERNAMA