The Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF) and the AllSeen Alliance, two groups that have been developing separate open-source frameworks for standardizing the means by which IoT products communicate with each other and connect to networks, announced Monday that they have merged.

OCF is the sponsor of the IoTivity open source project, while AllSeen Alliance is the provider of the AllJoyn open source IoT framework.

The two organizations’ boards have approved a merger under the OCF name and bylaws. This merger will advance interoperability between connected devices from both groups, enabling the full operating potential of IoT and representing a significant step towards a connected ecosystem.

The newly merged groups will collaborate on future OCF specifications, as well as the IoTivity and AllJoyn open source projects. The expanded OCF board of directors will consist of executives from a wide array of leading companies: AB Electrolux, Arçelik A.S., ARRIS International plc, CableLabs, Canon, Inc., Cisco Systems, Inc., GE Digital, Haier, Intel, LG Electronics, Inc., Microsoft, Qualcomm, Samsung Electronics, and Technicolor SA, said OCF.

“By coming together as one group, we are able to make IoT a more seamless, secure experience for everyone involved, from developers to end users,” said Danny Lousberg, Chairperson of the AllSeen Alliance. “The AllSeen Alliance and Open Connectivity Foundation have been working together closely to deliver a technologically comprehensive solution that makes sense for the industry and our members.”

OCF will now sponsor both the IoTivity and AllJoyn open source projects at The Linux Foundation. Both projects will collaborate to support future versions of the OCF specification in a single IoTivity implementation that combines the best of both technologies into a unified solution. Current devices running on either AllJoyn or IoTivity solutions will be interoperable and backward-compatible. Companies already developing IoT solutions based on either technology can proceed with the confidence that their products will be compatible with the unified IoT standard that the industry has been asking for, said OCF.