A merger between a prominent industrial IoT umbrella group and a blockchain-centered corporate membership program highlights a new focus on bringing finished IoT solutions to market. Credit: Leo Wolfert / Getty Images The Industrial Internet Consortium and the Trusted IoT Alliance announced today that they would merge memberships, in an effort to drive more collaborative approaches to industrial IoT and help create more market-ready products. The Trusted IoT Alliance will now operate under the aegis of the IIC, a long-standing umbrella group for vendors operating in the IIoT market. The idea is to help create more standardized approaches to common use cases in IIoT, enabling companies to get solutions to market more quickly. “This consolidation will strengthen the ability of the IIC to provide guidance and advance best practices on the uses of distributed-ledger technology across industries, and boost the commercialization of these products and services,” said 451 Research senior blockchain and DLT analyst Csilla Zsigri in a statement. Gartner vice president and analyst Al Velosa said that it’s possible the move to team up with TIoTA was driven in part by a new urgency to reach potential customers. Where other players in the IoT marketplace, like the major cloud vendors, have raked in billions of dollars in revenue, the IIoT vendors themselves haven’t been as quick to hit their sales targets. “This approach is them trying to explore new vectors for revenue that they haven’t before,” Velosa said in an interview. The IIC, whose founding members include Cisco, IBM, Intel, AT&T and GE, features 19 different working groups, covering everything from IIoT technology itself to security to marketing to strategy. Adding TIoTA’s blockchain focus to the mix could help answer questions about security, which are centrally important to the continued success of enterprise and industrial IoT products. Indeed, research from Gartner released late last year shows that IoT users are already gravitating toward blockchain and other distributed-ledger technologies. Fully three-quarters of IoT technology adopters in the U.S. have either brought that type of technology into their stack already or are planning to do so by the end of 2020. While almost two-thirds of respondents to the survey cited security and trust as the biggest drivers of their embrace of blockchain, almost as many noted that the technology had allowed them to increase business efficiency and lower costs. Related content opinion What is DNS and how does it work? The Domain Name System resolves the names of internet sites with their underlying IP addresses adding efficiency and even security in the process. By Josh Fruhlinger and Keith Shaw Mar 29, 2024 11 mins Internet Networking news analysis Industry groups drive Ethernet upgrades for AI, HPC AI networking and bulkier data center applications are sparking advancements in Ethernet-based communication technologies. By Michael Cooney Mar 29, 2024 8 mins High-Performance Computing Data Center Networking news Nvidia GTC 2024 wrap-up: Blackwell not the only big news More happened at the Nvidia GTC conference than the Blackwell announcement, including the launch of two new high-speed network platforms. By Andy Patrizio Mar 29, 2024 5 mins CPUs and Processors High-Performance Computing Data Center analysis Network automation challenges are dampening success rates Most enterprises are juggling multiple commercial, open source, and homegrown network automation tools, and few are reporting fully successful automation initiatives. By Denise Dubie Mar 28, 2024 6 mins Data Center Automation Network Management Software Network Monitoring PODCASTS VIDEOS RESOURCES EVENTS NEWSLETTERS Newsletter Promo Module Test Description for newsletter promo module. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe