By James Blackman

The Industrial Internet Consortium has rebranded as the Industry IoT Consortium. The IIC acronym remains. Explanation for the name change was limited, but claims some “new direction” and arguably reflects the technology sector’s acceptance of the internet of things (IoT) as the common technological framework for industrial change, to describe a variously networked sensor architecture, and to park the phrase ‘internet’ as a consumer term.

The organisation said it was “pivoting” to “reflect the maturity of the IoT marketplace”. A statement said: “We recognized the need to focus on technology deployments to solve technical problems and apply that technology to address pain points that improve end-user business results. Our mission is now to bring transformative business value to organizations, industry, and society by accelerating the adoption of trustworthy IoT systems.”

A new logo and tagline has also been introduced; the latter reads: “Technology Innovation. Business Transformation.” It appears the organisation is keen to promote the business upside of technological innovation, and not just to problem-solve the standardisation, deployment, integration, and privacy/security aspects of new industrial technologies. It said: “Our new focus on driving technology innovation that fosters business transformation.”

A statement said: “We will continue our work on best-practice frameworks, innovative testbeds, and liaising with standards development organizations. We will also continue to target our services toward members in our core verticals of IT, networks, academia and research, manufacturing, energy and utilities, and healthcare. Industry organizations and technology providers turn to IIC to provide credible resources for IoT support and guidance.”

In January, the IIC joined with the Clean Energy Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute (CESMII), which brands itself as the Smart Manufacturing Institute in the US, to accelerate the “development, adoption, and monetization” of industrial IoT technologies. Specifically, the pair announced joint activities on interoperability between industrial solutions, alignment of ‘horizontal’ technology domains, plus various knowledge exchange initiatives.

In April last year, ​​it announced work with the Automotive Edge Computing Consortium (AECC) to define architectural principles to prevent fragmentation of the industrial internet for the automotive industry. The pair said they will seek to harmonise various aspects of Industry 4.0 for the automotive sector, and identify and share best practices, harmonise architecture and APIs, and collaborate on standardisation proposals.