Open IoT standards organisation, the Zigbee Alliance, has announced a Europe Interest Group with a view to facilitating “collaboration and conversation” among members.

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 – it seeks to strengthen alliance standards globally.

Standards work

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.

“I am looking forward to collaborating on new levels with fellow alliance companies from an EU perspective and fostering more regular interaction between our members that are interested and invested in the European residential or commercial IoT markets,” said Axelsson.

“The formation of this European-centric group will take alliance-wide cooperation and communication to new levels, which is essential as our game-changing Project CHIP initiative comes into focus”

“We are creating a structure to provide better visibility into the important developments happening across the Zigbee Alliance, and our 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 Zigbee Alliance’s 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 endeavours for the European landscape
• coordinating and engaging with alliance marketing teams to support EU events and speaker programmes.

“The formation of this European-centric group will take alliance-wide cooperation and communication to new levels, which is essential as our game-changing Project CHIP initiative comes into focus and to the market in early 2021, and we continue to drive openness and interoperability through our flagship Zigbee standards,” added Bruno Vulcano, R&D manager at Legrand and chairman of the board for the Zigbee Alliance.

The Zigbee Alliance’s global membership aims to evolve universal open standards for smart home and smart city devices and other products. Its board of directors is comprises executives from companies such as Amazon, Apple, Google, Comcast, Huawei, Legrand, Lutron Electronics, NXP, Schneider Electric, Signify, Silicon Labs and Texas Instruments.

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