Thread Adoption is Growing Through Industry-Wide Collaboration and Expanded Ecosystems with the Availability of Market-Ready Thread Certified Components
The Thread Group has announced several milestones supporting its mission to provide an interoperable foundation to extend the power of the Internet to the low-power wireless devices that make up the Internet of Things.
Siemens Building Technologies and Nordic Semiconductors have both increased their commitment in the Thread Group, and joined its board of directors, further expanding the alliance’s presence in the global commercial and smart home marketplace.
“We chose to increase our commitment to Thread because it solves commercial building spaces’ biggest challenge: technology silos plagued with minimal interoperation,” noted Klaus Waechter, standardization manager, Siemens Building Technologies. “Thread wireless connectivity enables more flexibility in functionality planning, better system features, easier maintenance and lower cost. Because it’s built on IP, it offers robust end-to-end security measures, and the mesh architecture makes it possible for devices from multiple manufacturers to connect seamlessly. Siemens supports Thread’s effort to unify the fragmented connected device industry and unlock new markets.”
The proven, secure and already widely-deployed Thread specification is currently in use for residential IoT applications. With its powerful features for commercial applications, it scales to reliably connect thousands of wireless products in commercial grade buildings.
“The Thread Group is expanding beyond smart-home applications; it’s gaining traction with major product vendors while expanding its collaboration with other standards organizations,” said Pär Håkansson, Nordic Semiconductor’s product marketing manager responsible for smart home strategies and products. “The smart home is a key business segment for Nordic and its sponsor membership of the Thread Group will strengthen both organizations’ leadership in low-power wireless technology.”
Industry Collaboration
Recognizing that developers of IoT, connected devices and buildings need to assemble an entire solution, the Thread Group partners with other standards organizations and alliances to provide an interoperable foundation for all devices connected to the Internet of Things.
KNX and Thread Group are working together to provide a solution incorporating Thread’s IP-based networking layer with KNX’s well-established and interoperable application that developers can easily implement into a product. KNX has chosen Thread as the low-power wireless communication protocol for KNX IoT.
The Thread Group’s current liaison partners include Continental Automated Buildings Association (CABA), EEBus, Fairhair Alliance, KNX, Linaro, Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF) and Zigbee Alliance.
These liaison agreements create a foundation for organizations to explore opportunities to collaborate on technical specifications and network management in order to advance connectivity and interoperability. Additionally, Thread’s liaison partners will collaborate to achieve the common goal of one-stop certification with the ability to exchange relevant documents with intellectual property protection for each providing organization.
Thread Ecosystem and Resources Available Globally
With Thread, product and platform vendors deliver the high-quality, interoperable user experiences needed to drive growth, while its IP foundation allows vendors to maintain a direct connection to their device – and their customers. As a result of this compelling value proposition:
Google and Nest continue to enable the Thread market with updates to OpenWeave, their open-source application layer for connected consumer products, and OpenThread, an open-source implementation of Thread. New content in the form of references, guides, codelabs, and ready-to-integrate open source code will help developers deliver Thread- and Weave-enabled products and solutions.
The Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF) sponsors the IoTivity project, which includes a Lite implementation with a native port to OpenThread and also supports the Thread network in other constrained operating systems, such as Zephyr.
There is a comprehensive, constantly expanding set of Thread certified components available to address every IoT application, while also reducing risk and development time.
The Thread Group supports its members with a variety of resources, products and services designed to help developers build Thread solutions, including:
– A Webinar on Developing IoT Devices With Thread
– Case Studies: Yale Locks & Particle
– White papers: The Value of Low Power, Application Layer Interop, Border Router Best Practices, Thread in Commercial
– Thread Honors Home and Commercial IoT Innovation
Thread Group’s Innovation Enabler Program gives innovative young companies the opportunity to play a role in defining connected homes and buildings through access to Thread’s technology and the consortium’s membership. Recent winners include IPv6home.se and iOTA World.