Sony Joins AllSeen Internet of Things Alliance

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The Linux Foundation’s Allseen Alliance has a new member today. Sony has announced that it is joining AllSeen in a bid to bolster its Internet of Things (IoT) presence.

The AllSeen project got started in December of 2013 as an effort to build an open standards based approach to IoT. The big initial core code contribution that started the project is open-source technology first built by Qualcomm, known as the AllJoyn project.

By June of this year, Allseen had already grown to 50 members and now Sony will expand that number further.

Joe Speed, Director of IoT at the AllSeen Alliance, told Datamation that Sony was introduced to AllSeen by another AllSeen member. All told, there are now 64 members of the AllSeen Alliance, including both large industry players and startups.

“The interest in the Alliance continues to grow across the industry and we expect more members to be announced,” Speed said.

As a Premier member of the AllSeen Alliance, Sony isn’t just pledging its moral support, but actual dollars as well. Speed noted that the cost for Premier Members – which Sony will be — is $300,000 in the first year and $250,000 thereafter. In contrast, the cost for Community Members varies based on the size of the organization but ranges between $5,000 and $50,000.

At this early stage, only time will tell what Sony will contribute in terms of code or development expertise.

“As is often the case with new members after officially joining, representatives from Sony will talk with other members about the best ways it can contribute to the effort to build out the AllJoyn framework,” Speed said. “Sometimes, that means contributing code; sometimes, that means joining one of the Alliance sub-groups that are working on specific areas of IoT interoperability.”

In terms contributing code to AllSeen, Speed noted that there are no development requirements and anyone can start contributing today. He added that the projects at the Alliance use the Gerrit code review system, making it relatively simple to contribute. All a user needs to do is simply register an account at AllSeenAlliance.org and begin.

From an actual code perspective, in July, the Alliance released Version 14.06 of the AllJoyn framework and more work is still in the development pipeline.

“We’re on roughly a four- to six-month release schedule,” Speed said. ” We’ll also have announcements soon about the important work being done in the Alliance in specific areas such as connected lighting.”

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at Datamation and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.