As far off as making a full digital transformation remains for many industrial companies, adoption of blockchain technology is often seen as an even more distant goal. Despite the reach required to incorporate these advanced technologies into everyday manufacturing operations, few would argue that these two technology paths are outside the mainstream of industry direction or unlikely to occur. And with continued advances being made, adoption of these technologies is becoming more feasible both in terms of cost and ease. It’s more a question of when, not if, the digital transformation of industry and accompanying blockchain adoption become widespread.
With these industry goals coming more clearly into view with each passing year, the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) and the Trusted IoT Alliance (TIoTA) (https://www.trusted-iot.org/) have announced they are combining their memberships, effective immediately. According to a release issued by the two organizations, they will work together under the IIC umbrella to drive industry collaboration and research, foster open systems development, and promote best practices for trusted IoT systems such as blockchain and related distributed ledger technologies.
“Since IIC began in 2014, the use cases for distributed ledger technology have grown exponentially," Richard Soley, IIC executive director. "The combined organization will offer a single stop for IoT industry guidance and a larger ecosystem for end users looking to improve their bottom line with IoT and distributed ledger technologies.”
Anoop Nannra, founder and chairman of TIoTA, added that, as an IIC liaison, “We (TIoTA) have already partnered with IIC on some of our Trusted IoT Global Design Challenges, our Trusted IoT Reference Architecture working group, and other initiatives. We are looking forward to bringing these into the IIC portfolio to further develop practices around multi-stakeholder innovation strategies.”
