Launching the Web of Things Interest Group

The Internet of Things is frequently in the technology news media. Advances in connected sensors and actuators is fuelling interest in applications and services, where according to Gartner, most of the commercial value is expected to be realized. To reach the full potential, this will depend upon open standards as a basis for richly interconnected open ecosystems.

Following the Web of Things workshop in Berlin in June 2014, W3C has launched an Interest Group to focus on the Web of Things. The Interest Group's charter calls for a survey of use cases and requirements across the many potential application domains, along with a study of best practices. The aim is to build a shared vision and identify specific opportunities for standardisation to enable open markets of applications and services based upon the Internet of Things (IoT) and the Web of data.

So far work on the Internet of Things has focused on the sensors and actuators and the associated communication technologies. Comparatively little attention has been given to what is needed for services to break free of today's product silos. Web technologies are considered to be very promising, including the role of scripting languages like JavaScript for defining services. However, there is considerable work left to do to support discovery and interoperation of services, along with attention to security, privacy, accessibility and resilience in the face of faults and attacks.

The potential if we get this right is huge and will greatly expand the scale of the Web. Please join us to help address the many challenges.