Two groups working to advance the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) and Edge Computing Consortium (ECC), have announced a plan to collaborate on their overlapping interests. The two consortiums have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to work together to advance edge computing and the industrial Internet.
Although specific details of the partnership have not been released, the consortiums plan to meet regularly to coordinate joint activities that fall within the scope of both the IIC and ECC, such as determining IIoT best practices, tackling the problem of IIoT standardization, and working on research and development projects.
“We are very excited about the cooperation between ECC and the IIC,” said ECC Chairman Yu Haibin. “We believe that an in-depth exploration of edge computing technology used in the industrial Internet area will better meet the industrial customers’ end-to-end needs to promote the global industry digitization transformation.”
The ECC is a fairly new addition to the IoT landscape, and was established in late 2016 by Huawei, Intel and others to promote edge computing as critical to IIoT adoption. The ICC, in contrast, has been around since 2014—enough time to publish some results and gain IoT experience that they’ll no doubt bring to the new partnership.
“Edge computing is a key enabling technology to the industrial IoT system,” said Wael William Diab, chair of the IIC’s Liaison Working Group. “The liaison with the Edge Computing Consortium broadens the industrial IoT ecosystem in line with the Liaison Working Group's effort to build coalitions within the industrial IoT space.”
IIC and EEC members will meet at a workshop in Beijing later this month to kick of the new partnership.
To learn more about the IIC, read How to Speak the Language of the IIoT.