Tech heavyweights including Microsoft, Samsung, Intel, Qualcomm, Cisco, ARRIS, Electrolux, CableLabs, and GE Digital announced the formation of the Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF) aimed at helping to unify Internet of Things (IoT) standards so businesses and developers can create IoT solutions and devices that cooperate with one another.

According to the announcement, the OCF, which unifies the former Open Interconnect Consortium (OIC) with various companies, will work to accelerate industry innovation and collaborate on specifications, protocols, and open source projects so that a wide range of consumer, enterprise, and embedded devices and sensors from a variety of makers can seamlessly (and securely) work together.

The goal is to make it so that billions of connected devices, appliances, phones, computers, and industrial machines can communicate with one another regardless of manufacturer, operating system, chipset, or transport.

Terry Myerson, EVP, Windows and Devices Group at Microsoft said, “The OCF will help consolidate industry attention and create opportunity, via an agreed upon set of protocols that move the world forward. We are designing Windows 10 to be the ideal operating system and Azure to be the best cloud companion for Things, and for both of them to interoperate with all Things. Windows 10 devices will natively support the new OCF standard, making it easy for Windows to discover, communicate, and orchestrate multiple IoT devices in the home, in business, and beyond. We look forward to seeing the innovation this new standard will enable for all customers and the endless opportunities it will create for developers.”

“OIC has been working to develop a standard specification for IoT devices, and at the same time developing IoTivity as an open source reference implementation,” said SeungHwan Cho, Executive Vice President and Deputy Head of Software R&D Center at Samsung. “We welcome these leaders in their fields to OCF, which we believe will become the most diverse global organization developing IoT standards and code.”

You can learn more about the Foundation and peruse various resources here.

Image via OCF (Twitter)