An essential component in creating new technical solutions is standards – This also goes for the IoT.

AIOTI has mapped the individual standard development organizations relevant to the IoT. In the figure above it can be seen that many of these standards are available for the IoT. These provide common interfaces with respect to the basic connectivity and some of them all the way up to the semantic level, where also the meaning of the data transmitted is defined. This ensures that IoT devices and IoT services from multiple vendors can communicate with each other and are able to send and/or interpret the data in common formats.

The above figure places the individual standard development organizations, in relation to each other, based on whether they are closer to the Business-to-consumer or business-to-business market on the x-axis and the closeness to connectivity or service & application on the y-axis. Another mapping which is relevant is the division into different business sectors, or verticals as they are called in the IoT world. Here specific standards are created to be dedicated to specific application areas, such as the automotive, medical, industrial, farming, smart city, etc.

Lastly it is important to emphasize the different standard purposes. Where different standards are dedicated to

- describe the reference architecture and development process (as described above)
- basic technical interface interoperability such as data interfaces, wireless communication and protocols
- Organizational development and procedures for quality assurance
- Testing IoT systems for
> regulatory compliance to legally required parameters
> ruggedness and reliability for long term installation