The Essence Group, a leading provider of IoT solutions for security, connected home and healthcare, has joined Zigbee Alliance as a member in the "Project Connected Home over IP" initiative. In doing so, the company will contribute to developing and promoting the adoption of a new, royalty-free connectivity standard to increase compatibility among smart home products, with security as a fundamental design tenet.
The goal of the Connected Home over IP project is to simplify development for manufacturers and increase compatibility for consumers. The project is built around a shared belief that smart home devices should be secure, reliable, and seamless to use. By building upon Internet Protocol (IP), the project aims to enable communication across smart home devices, mobile apps, and cloud services and to define a specific set of IP-based networking technologies for device certification.
The industry working group will take an open-source approach for the development and implementation of a new, unified connectivity protocol. The project intends to use contributions from market-tested smart home technologies from various member companies. The decision to leverage these technologies is expected to accelerate the development of the protocol and deliver benefits to manufacturers and consumers faster.
Dr. Haim Amir, CEO of Essence Group, commented that Essence is excited to join in and contribute to the standard by bringing its vast 25 years of experience and know-how in developing and manufacturing radio IoT devices for the security, connected home and health care markets, currently producing over 10 million such devices per year. As a global Software & IoT provider with a history of developing disruptive technologies, Essence has always believed in the holistic vision of 'better life made possible' while building solutions at scale that emphasize security and, privacy together with intuitive user experience.
Participating in the Connected Home over IP project is important to accelerate the creation of a global standard. Through it, Essence will demonstrate new abilities across different segments over the next decade.
Chris LaPre, Solutions Architect, Zigbee Alliance, commented that industry players are working alongside each other through the Alliance to shape the future of the IoT using open, global standards. Their members together drive meaningful connections throughout the smart home, and they welcome new additions like Essence Group to their roster of IoT visionaries.
