Editor’s note: Cisco, Microsoft, Intel and others recently formed the Open Connectivity Foundation with the aim of defining interoperability standards for Internet of Things devices. But is OCF the answer? Any numerous big names such as IBM, Google and Dell are missing. Technology Business Research analyst Ezra Gottheil offers his assessment.

HAMPTON, N.H. – The Internet of Things (IoT) is rapidly evolving. IoT solutions are being built from component parts and there is a perceived lack of standards inhibiting the growth of IoT. For these reasons, a new group of vendors, including many of the largest companies pursuing IoT, has formed an organization called the Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF). The OCF’s goal is to define interoperability standards for IoT devices.

The lack of IoT standards — or the perceived lack of standards — is one of several reasons that IoT is not growing as fast as its more optimistic supporters had hoped. TBR has reduced its forecast growth slightly in the most recent edition of the TBR Commercial IoT Market Forecast. There are other reasons for slower-than-expected growth, such as the lack of predefined IoT commercial solutions and the difficulty of confidently estimating solutions’ ROI, but customers are concerned about ending up with nonstandard interfaces.

The real problem is not whether interfaces are standard but whether they are adopted broadly enough to ensure continued support and development. IoT is still growing vigorously and de facto standards are emerging and eventually will become official. Nevertheless, customers are concerned and vendors want standards.

The OCF group includes ARRIS, CableLabs, Cisco, Electrolux, GE Digital, Intel, Microsoft, Qualcomm and Samsung. In 2014 Samsung, Intel and Broadcom formed the Open Interconnect Consortium (OIC). That group’s URL now points to the new OCF website. Meanwhile, three companies that helped start the Allseen Alliance — Microsoft, Electrolux and Qualcomm— are also now part of OCF but continue their membership in the Allseen Alliance.

Interoperability is essential for IoT, and the perception that the problem is being solved is critical for vendor companies. At this point there are no apparent conflicting standards or consortia to Allseen. Evidently, the members of OCF believe there are interoperating standards that Allseen is not addressing that can potentially increase the value of IoT solutions or make them easier to implement.

Among the missing from OCF are IBM, SAP, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Dell, Google and Amazon Web Services (AWS). IBM, SAP, Google and AWS provide their own IoT platforms in competition with Microsoft, and Microsoft has been emphasizing native support of emerging OCF standards in both Windows and Azure. HPE and Dell are agnostic with respect to connectivity standards and platforms, but Microsoft appears to be embracing OCF to the extent that the other platform vendors may fear their technologies will be excluded.

It is not clear if the OCF standards will really favor Microsoft technologies or give Microsoft a lead in building to the new standards. Microsoft’s competitors will be evaluating OCF proposals to see if they can join without jeopardizing their competitive position. All IoT companies will benefit from robust and powerful interoperability standards, but vendors are understandably cautious about empowering their competitors.

The fact that major vendors are not part of OCF signals there will be more of these announcements of consortia and alliances in pursuit of standards. IoT will continue to evolve and de facto standard protocols will emerge, at which point significant divergent vendors, if they exist, will accept the inevitable — adopt the dominant protocols and join the standards body that will evolve them further. IoT will grow rapidly, but slower than if the standards bodies were stable, but the intense competition rules that out.

(C) TBR