Smart lighting company Gooee said Thursday it has integrated Nordic Semiconductor’s Bluetooth Smart Mesh networking technology into its lighting and sensing platform for the commercial market. Through its partnership with Nordic Semiconductor, Gooee will be one of the first companies to adopt Bluetooth Smart Mesh, which enables sensing and control data to be sent reliably over an extended wireless network, allowing for “new levels of management and control.” The Bluetooth Mesh Networking framework promises energy savings of up to 90 percent and will change the way consumers engage with retailers and other commercial environments, Gooee said.

Toshiba became the first Japanese company to join the OpenFog Consortium, whose other members include Cisco, Dell, Intel, Microsoft and Princeton University’s Edge Laboratory, Toshiba said in a Thursday announcement. The consortium “brings together key players” in the IoT “ecosystem” to promote the deployment of “fog computing,” Toshiba said. It defined fog computing as a “paradigm for expanding cloud computing” to enable the creation of storage and network services between devices and cloud data centers “in a highly virtualized manner.” OpenFog “works to accelerate innovation and industry growth through new business models and applications enabled by an open fog-based architecture,” Toshiba said. “The OpenFog architecture brings seamless intelligence from the cloud to IoT endpoints using an open standardized approach.” IoT’s “prevalence” has made it possible to monitor and control many types of devices over the cloud, Toshiba said. “The cloud receives and analyzes data to provide visualized information for use in prediction, efficiency optimization, downtime reduction, and performance improvement,” it said. “Companies also expect to add new functions to the IoT devices. All of these factors increase network traffic and pose a challenge to fast data.”

Lockheed Martin and Orbcomm plan to jointly pursue machine-to-machine business opportunities that use satellite or hybrid satellite/cellular networks, they said in a news release Thursday. Lockheed Martin Space Systems Vice President-Strategy and Advanced Programs Dave Markham said that "the vision of the Internet of Things promises to change how society benefits from machines embedded with greater intelligence, improving the decisions organizations make and ultimately the quality of service delivered to their end users." The companies said that they will focus on the government sector, with the collaboration potentially involving joint business development and new services.

“Completeness of protection” is the top concern among large- and medium-sized businesses that have mobile device and IoT security systems in place, an IHS survey found. The legal battle between Apple and the FBI over iPhone encryption “has put extreme focus on the topic of mobile device security,” IHS said in a Monday report. “Like it or not, a new wave of mobile devices is being connected to corporate networks, changing the way people work and blurring the lines between personal and corporate assets -- and making nearly every enterprise in North America a target for mobile security solutions,” it said. “Buyers are making important budget and technology decisions now, and security vendors wishing to tap into the mobile and IoT device security opportunity need to offer on-device, on-network and even cloud-based solutions.” The research firm canvassed 157 businesses in the U.S. and Canada and found that many IT departments “don’t know how many or which mobile devices are on their networks already,” it said. “Even with security solutions in place, devices are lost, stolen, infected and compromised, so solutions need to address more than threat prevention.” Most IT departments also lack “comprehensive security for mobile devices, and the pressure of also rolling out solutions for IoT devices can be overwhelming,” it said.

Business professionals in many industries see IoT making a big shift toward “mainstream adoption” in 2016, Gartner said Thursday in a survey report. The research firm canvassed 465 firms in 18 business sectors globally in November and found 29 percent using IoT products or services, it said. An additional 14 percent are planning to implement IoT in the coming 12 months, with 21 percent more planning to implement IoT after 2016, it said. “The number of organizations adopting IoT will grow 50 percent in 2016, reaching 43 percent of organizations overall.” In the “aggregate,” 64 percent “plan to eventually implement IoT,” it said. “It is also important to note that another 38 percent have no plans to implement IoT, including 9 percent that see no relevance whatsoever in the technologies.” IoT adoption remains low because “many organizations have yet to establish a clear picture of what benefits the IoT can deliver, or have not yet invested the time to develop ideas for how to apply IoT to their business,” Gartner said. "However, we are poised for a marked shift in focus toward customer-facing benefits for planned IoT implementations, positioning IoT as a key competitive marketplace weapon going forward."

Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., and three other Senate Commerce Committee members introduced the Developing Innovation and Growing the Internet of Things (Digit) Act Tuesday as what Fischer called a next step in developing a “national strategy” on IoT issues. Co-sponsors are Sens. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii. The Digit Act would direct the FCC to issue a report assessing the amount of spectrum needed to support the IoT. The bill would also convene a working group of federal stakeholders that would make recommendations to Congress within one year on how to “appropriately plan for and encourage” IoT proliferation in the U.S. The working group would include representatives from the FCC, the FTC, NTIA, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the departments of Commerce and Transportation, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Science Foundation. The working group would also consult with “key industry stakeholders,” including communications sector manufacturers and vendors, plus consumer groups, the bill said. The Senate passed an IoT resolution in 2015 sponsored by Ayotte, Booker, Fischer and Schatz that sought the promotion of IoT innovation along with the development of related technological safeguards (see 1503250016).

Industry's anticipated breadth and diversity of possible IoT products and services is contained in the 340-word description accompanying the trademark registration application for a certification compliance logo that the Open Interconnect Consortium submitted to the Patent and Trademark Office about a month before changing its name to the Open Connectivity Foundation (see 1602190059), PTO documents show. The “certification mark,” OIC said in the application (serial number 86877163) it filed Jan. 15, “is intended to certify that goods manufactured or distributed by authorized persons comply with designated standards pertaining to the Internet of Things.” Those goods and services could include such things as “metal garage doors,” “smart Wi-Fi speakers,” electronic “monitors that enable the interoperability of electrical and electronic devices of any kind via wireless communication,” “smart yoga mats” and even “DNA analysis devices for environmental, food and pathogen monitoring,” the application said. OIC “has a bona fide intention, and is entitled, to exercise legitimate control over the use of the certification mark in commerce by its authorized users on or in connection with the identified goods/services,” it told PTO. OIC itself “will not engage in the production or marketing of the goods/services to which the mark is applied, except to advertise or promote recognition of the certification program or of the goods/services that meet the certification standards of the applicant,” it said. The logo “consists of a miscellaneous design in a circular shape comprised of interlocking curved lines,” with no color claimed as a feature of the mark, OIC’s application said. The newly renamed OCF is "not sure yet" whether it still plans to use the logo that OIC applied for Jan. 15 or whether it will develop a new mark since it changed its name, even though the logo depicted in the PTO application bears no OIC branding or identifier, spokeswoman Danielle Tarp emailed us Monday. OCF expects the compliance logo program to be ready for launch this year, she said. A notice on the group’s website says its certification activities are “still in development.” OCF has said it’s working to “accelerate solutions leading to a single, open IoT interoperability specification.”

AT&T is working with Ericsson on new software that will support “a new generation” of IoT apps and improve device performance on AT&T’s 4G LTE network, AT&T said Monday. “IoT solutions let businesses gather near real-time information on assets around the world,” said Chris Penrose, senior vice president-IoT at AT&T Mobility. “Working with Ericsson and our existing LTE systems, AT&T will continue to enable a wide variety of next generation IoT devices on our LTE network.” Work is focusing on CAT-M technology supporting “next generation devices” such as wearables and utility meters, and narrow-band IoT technology that “supports next generation devices like smoke detectors, pollution monitors and industrial/agricultural sensors,” AT&T said. Other work focuses on improving battery life. “This new software will support a number of IoT devices and enable existing networks to work as the foundation for smart cities, utilities and other industries to build upon,” said Thomas Noren, head of radio product management at Ericsson.

Ericsson is partnering with Amazon Web Services to help telecom providers speed up their use of cloud-based services, the Sweden-based tech provider said in a Monday news release. Ericsson said its work with AWS will help telecoms better improve productivity and efficiency, reduce complexity and risk and better capitalize on opportunities like the IoT and big data analytics. "Ericsson will contribute expertise from its 25,000 R&D engineers and 66,000-person service workforce -- more than 17,000 of whom are consultants and systems integrators, delivering 1,500 projects per year around the world," the company said. Ericsson said AWS, which is providing resources such as professional services and training, is also helping to develop new capabilities like end-to-end security and data traffic management, workload management, and services related to local regulation and compliance requirements.

The Open Interconnect Consortium brought into the fold new members ElectroluxAB, Microsoft and Qualcomm and gave itself a new name, Open Connectivity Foundation, it said Friday. The consortium said it hopes to help unify IoT standards so developers and companies can create products that “work seamlessly together.” OCF will accelerate solutions leading to a single, open IoT interoperability specification, it said. Other members of the cross-industry group are Arris, CableLabs, Cisco, GE Digital, Intel and Samsung. The OCF’s vision for IoT is that “billions of connected devices (appliances, phones, computers, industrial equipment) will communicate with one another regardless of manufacturer, operating system, chipset or transport.” If it meets its goal, OCF said, anyone -- from a large technology company to a maker working out of a garage -- could adopt OCF’s open standards, innovate and compete ensuring “secure interoperability for consumers, business and industry.” Samsung’s Seung Hwan Cho, deputy head-software R&D center, said in a statement OIC had been working to develop a standard spec for IoT devices while developing IoTivity as an open-source reference implementation, and it welcomes the new members to OCF. Also in a prepared statement, Michael Wallace, president-Qualcomm Connected Experiences, said Qualcomm helped develop the AllJoyn framework to drive a similar goal, “and now we look forward to collaborating with leading IoT-focused companies to form the OCF for precisely the same reason.” Qualcomm, Electrolux and Microsoft are listed as premier members of the AllSeen Alliance, whose stated AllJoyn-based mission is to “enable industry standard interoperability between products and brands with an open source framework that drives intelligent experiences for the Internet of Things,” the website said. The AllSeen Alliance is "encouraged to see companies coming together to build new technologies through collaboration," AllSeen Board Chairman Danny Lousberg emailed us Friday on our queries about the relationship between OFC and AllSeen. "It accelerates development and innovation," Lousberg said. "Many of the companies committed to Open Connectivity Foundation remain invested in AllSeen Alliance, so we're confident that technology integration and collaboration across efforts will be a priority and can benefit the industry at large," he said. "AllSeen Alliance continues its focus on a robust code base and devices shipping with AllJoyn. As a code-first organization we are supportive of any effort to advance open specifications. We are eager to learn more about the OCF specification and the IP policies that surround it.”