Leading IoT organisations TioTA and IIC join forces – Technologist

The Trusted IoT Alliance (TIoTA) is merging with the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) effective immediately, working together under the IIC umbrella to drive industry collaboration and research, foster open systems development and promote best practices for trusted IoT systems such as blockchain and related distributed ledger technologies (DLT).

The first formal meeting of the combined organisation will be held in Athens, Greece, March 9-12, 2020.

“Over its two-year lifespan, TIoTA has impacted the intersection of DLT and IoT, while in its five years, the IIC has established major influence in IoT across industries,” said Csilla Zsigri, senior analyst, Blockchain & DLT, 451 Research.  “This consolidation will strengthen the ability of the IIC to provide guidance and advance best practices on the uses of distributed ledger technology across industries, and boost the commercialization of these products and services.”

The IIC delivers a trustworthy IIoT in which the world’s systems and devices are securely connected and controlled to deliver transformational outcomes, while TIoTA seeks to enable trust in the data produced by such IoT systems in a distributed ledger/blockchain agnostic fashion.

According to IIC executive director Richard Soley, the combined organisation will offer a single stop for IoT industry guidance and a larger ecosystem for end-users looking to improve their bottom line with IoT and DLT.

““Since IIC began in 2014, the use cases for distributed ledger technology have grown exponentially,” Soley said. “This merger will enable the consortium to become the centre of gravity for the future of industrial IoT systems across industry verticals.”

As an IIC liaison, TIoTA has previously partnered with IIC on some of  its Trusted IoT Global Design Challenges, Trusted IoT Reference Architecture working group, and other initiatives.

“We are looking forward to bringing these into the IIC portfolio to further develop practices around multi-stakeholder innovation strategies,” said Anoop Nannra, founder and chairman of TIoTA.  “Our membership is excited to help drive and shape the advancement of trusted systems in a broad range of IoT applications with the wider community.”

He added that TIoTA is  excited “to take this step toward integrating with IIC and continuing to accelerate our momentum together.”

TIoTA members welcomed the move to bring the two organisations together under one roof.

“TIoTA has built a community of technology leaders focused on bringing blockchain/DLT solutions to market,” said John Calian, head of Telekom Innovation Laboratories (T-Labs), an enterprise member of TIoTA. “This community is focused on leveraging the power of blockchain/DLT and the concept of decentralized trust to achieve greater security, scalability, and interoperability within existing and future IoT ecosystems. This direction will help the IIC continue its market momentum.”