oneM2M Aims to set Standards for M2M and IoT

In order to achieve plug-and-play interoperability between connected devices, what’s commonly called machine to machine (M2M) communications or the Internet of Things (IoT), there needs to be agreed-upon standards for connectivity, security and information sharing between the devices and back-end applications.

The first significant step in that direction came earlier this month when oneM2M, a global organization of over 200 companies, published a set of 10 documents that propose standards for IoT architecture, security, service definition, management, and specifying protocol bindings to the most commonly used IoT protocols CoAP, MQTT and HTTP.

The momentum behind this initiative is encouraging, and it’s good to see such an apparently complete standard proposed relatively early in the evolution of IoT. The devil will be in the details as we learn how comprehensive the specifications are, and to what degree early adopters must extend them to deliver production grade systems.

Still, something is better than nothing. For many this will become a good starting point, and it should help corral activity in generally the same direction. Hey, the internet and the web found their way to ubiquitous interoperability with some simple, guiding standards – maybe the same is possible for the Internet of Things?