oneM2M has launched a new initiative to promote sustainability via internet of things (IoT) technologies and open-standard systems.

The new initiative aims to promote the beneficial impact of IoT systems, the importance of open-standard solutions and the significant role that the oneM2M standard has in improving the sustainability of IoT deployments, the organisation states.

The first meeting of the new oneM2M Sustainability Sub-Committee will take place on the 20th April 2021.

Dale Seed, convenor of oneM2M's sustainability initiative from Interdigital and Convida Wireless, says, “The concept received strong cross-member support when first discussed and reflects the priority that corporations are putting on this issue.

"By launching this initiative, we want to help businesses build sustainability using IoT systems.

"We also want to show them how to choose sustainable technologies and prepare for the new innovation possibilities that these technologies enable.

oneM2M steering committee chair Enrico Scarrone says, “Mobile networks and IoT technologies are among the topmost candidates for enabling sustainability in the way that organisations manage their environmental footprint.

"This new initiative offers a way to help organisations build IoT systems based on an open standards framework that is scalable and minimises waste by re-using established technologies and legacy systems.

Opening its doors in 2012, oneM2M is a multi-national, collaborative approach to creating an extensible standard for IoT systems.

From the outset, oneM2M was focused on defining a general-purpose architecture applicable to a wide range of application domains.

The intention was to avoid competing standardisation efforts, at the technical and national levels.

oneM2M also aims to encourage interoperability by helping developers to re-use existing and established technologies, some of which are specific to individual industry domains.

According to the organisation, oneM2M's principles align with well-accepted sustainability objectives that seek to minimise duplicative efforts while prolonging the usefulness of legacy investments and fostering economies of scale.

On top of its member base, participation in oneM2M's sustainability initiative is open to the wider technology and software services communities.

This is because most IoT systems rely on partnerships among suppliers along business and operational value chains, according to the organisation.

Since the IoT and associated technologies such as AI, cloud computing and mobile internet are enablers of digital transformation, the oneM2M initiative also aims to work across industry domains.

Overall, building on the contributions of more than 250 members organisations, oneM2M specifications are designed to provide a framework to support end-to-end IoT systems, applications, and services.

The horizontal architecture and framework for oneM2M technical specifications has been developed in an open and collaborative environment, with a clear governance framework.

These factors facilitate trust in its specifications, cross-vendor interoperability tests and certification efforts, the organisation states.