On June 5, 2012, the IEEE Standards Association (IEEE-SA) collaborated with the China Communications Standards Association (CCSA) on a “Internet of Things” (IoT) standards workshop at the China World Hotel in Beijing, China, bringing together leading global industry experts to begin exploring how to achieve a common IoT architecture.

Representing the next iteration of the Internet where objects and systems will be connected, communicating and exchanging data without human intervention, the IoT spans a diverse array of applications. Smart Grid, home and industrial automation, transportation, robotics, and automotive are among the many settings ideally suited to IoT applications. The half-day workshop addressed these possible applications, as well as a broad variety of topics such as current standards work and convergent networks and machine-to-machine (M2M) communications.

The workshop also featured a cross-section of speakers and panelists from CCSA and IEEE-SA, as well as the transportation and coal mining sectors, IT, integrated service providers, telecom operators, institutes, and other leading global organizations and enterprises such as IBM, Siemens, and STMicroelectronics.

It is predicted that 50 to 100 billion things will be electronically connected by 2020. The IoT will fuel technology innovation by creating the means for machines to communicate many different types of information with one another. With all objects in the world connected, lives will be transformed. But the success of the Internet of Things depends strongly on standardization, which provides interoperability, compatibility, reliability, and effective operations on a global scale.