The Industrial Internet Consortium® (IIC), the world’s leading organization transforming business and society by accelerating the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), and the International Data Spaces Association (IDSA), an initiative to support the secure exchange and the simple linking of data in business eco-systems on the basis of standards and by means of common governance models, announced they have agreed to a liaison to work together to advance their shared interests. Under the agreement, the IIC and IDSA will work together to promote the digital economy by preventing fragmentation and harmonizing various aspects in the fields of the industrial Internet.
A ceremony to solidify the liaison was held on September 12, 2018, at the quarterly IIC member meeting in Chicago. IIC Executive Director Richard Soley and IDSA Deputy Chairman of the Board Prof. Dr. Boris Otto of Fraunhofer ISST signed a memorandum of understanding that outlined the joint activities between the two organizations.
Joint activities between IIC and IDSA will include:
• Identifying and sharing good practices;
• Realizing interoperability by harmonizing architecture and other elements;
• Collaborating on standardization;
• Emphasizing the focus concerning security and usage control of data in the IIRA integrating the trusted connector approach; and
• Promoting the cooperation and validating the architectural alignment by establishing at least one joint use case with companies using testbeds of the IIC.
“Data is the center of IoT innovation. Our collaboration will advance data sovereignty as one of the fundamental building blocks of the digital economy,” said Prof. Dr. Boris Otto, Deputy Chairman of the IDSA Board and Executive Director of Fraunhofer ISST.
“As data becomes more of an economic factor in IIoT, the collaboration between our two organizations will provide guidance to help accelerate the innovation of the IoT,” said IIC Executive Director Dr. Richard Soley.
“With billions of IoT devices collecting data, the trustworthiness of that data within ecosystems remains a key concern. This collaboration will help improve trustworthiness within ecosystems and IIoT solutions,” said Andreas Teuscher, Chair of the IDSA Architecture Working Group and Chief Industrial Security Officer of SICK AG.
“Data and trustworthiness are an important part of successful IoT adoption,” Said Wael William Diab, Chair of the IIC Liaison Working Group, and Senior Director at Huawei. “The collaboration with IDSA adds to the industrial IoT ecosystem that IIC is driving.”
