The Zigbee Alliance, an organization that consists of hundreds of companies creating, maintaining, and delivering open, global standards for the Internet of Things (IoT), announced its newly launched Europe Interest Group. Comprised of volunteer members with a shared focus on topics relating to Alliance technologies and the European market including the Connected Home over IP project – the new Interest Group is designed to facilitate conversations and collaboration among members to strengthen Zigbee Alliance standards globally.
Membership is open to all Zigbee Alliance Participants and Promoters. The group is chaired by Alliance Board Member and IoT Architect Ulf Axelsson of IKEA Home smart, and the Europe Interest Group will bring a European voice more formally into the standards work within the Alliance.
Zigbee Alliance is looking to collaborate on new levels with fellow Alliance companies from an EU perspective, and foster more regular interaction between the members that are interested and invested in the European residential or commercial IoT markets. They are creating a structure to provide better visibility into the important developments happening across the Zigbee Alliance, and the Europe Interest Group provides an efficient avenue for more two-way dialogue and information exchange between regions, countries, companies, and individuals all working toward the same technology goals.
The Europe Interest Group operates under the supervision of the Zigbee Alliance Board of Directors, and is tasked with:
- Providing input to the Board regarding European technology needs and current events;
- Collecting, capturing, and sharing ongoing information about EU regulation and standards to the Working Groups within the Alliance to aid in the development of global, open IoT standards;
- Sharing regular Project CHIP updates to EU member companies;
- Facilitating discussions around Project CHIP interoperability across Europe while providing insight to shape future endeavors for the European landscape;
- Coordinating and engaging with Alliance marketing teams to support EU events and speaker programs.
The formation of this European-centric group will take Alliance-wide cooperation and communication to new levels, which is essential as the game-changing Project CHIP initiative comes into focus and to the market in early 2021, and continue to drive openness and interoperability through the flagship Zigbee standards.
