Technology organizations are prepping for the dawn of the Internet of Things (IoT) or the age when everything is connected. It should not come as surprise then that industry giants Amazon, Apple, and Google join hands with Zigbee Alliance to create a working group for Project Connected Home.

The group will be tasked “to develop and promote the adoption of a new, royalty-free connectivity standard to increase compatibility among smart home products, with security as a fundamental design tenet,” according to the media release by Apple.

Project Connected Home over IP welcomes device manufacturers, silicon providers, and other developers from across the smart home industry to participate in and contribute to the standard.

Have you read “IDC: Worldwide smart home devices to maintain steady growth through 2023”?

Zigbee Alliance board member companies include IKEA, Legrand, NXP Semiconductors, Resideo, Samsung SmartThings, Schneider Electric, Signify (formerly Philips Lighting), Silicon Labs, Somfy, and Wulian.

Project Connected Home aims to make it easier for manufacturers to utilize the open-source approach in developing technologies and devices. This is hoped to increase “compatibility” for consumers and consumer technology.

As devices and services are connected to the cloud, the project hopes to provide a technology that people can put their trust. It should be reliable and secure.

“By building upon Internet Protocol (IP), the project aims to enable communication across smart home devices, mobile apps, and cloud services and to define a specific set of IP-based networking technologies for device certification,” according to the media release.

As Amazon, Apple, Google, and members of Zigbee Alliance have already showcased their capabilities in smart-home technologies, their contributions are hoped to become benchmarks for future devices and technologies that are either in prototype or are yet to be built.

“The planned protocol will complement existing technologies, and working group members encourage device manufacturers to continue innovating using technologies available today,” the release states.