Multi-vendor integration and interoprability to be critical success factor in bringing internet of things services to market - A conversation with Danny Lousberg, Director of Product Management, Technicolor Much of the focus in assessing the growth of the Internet of Things has stemmed from the automatic connectivity and interaction among devices without human intervention. At some point, however, the objective of IoT is to make the lives of people better. As the relationship between IoT and the human experience is explored to develop customer facing applications, it will be important to ensure seamless integration across devices. In 2012, Technicolor saw the need to interconnect all IoT devices and applications, regardless of brand or manufacturer. This led to the development of Qeo, a communications framework built on Linux design, which made its public debut in 2013. Since then, Technicolor has joined an industry consortium, AllSeen Alliance, and is contributing the work it’s done with Qeo. In this Q&A, Technicolor Director of Product Management Danny Lousberg shares his insights on the challenges related to IoT, how Qeo can help to overcome those challenges, and the work Technicolor is doing with AllSeen Alliance.

1. THE FUTURE TRUST
Q&A
Multi-Vendor Integration
and Interoperability to be
Critical Success Factor in
Bringing Internet of Things
Services to Market
A Conversation with
Danny Lousberg
Director of Product
Management, Technicolor

2. THE FUTURE TRUST technicolor 2
A Conversation with
Danny Lousberg
Director of Product
Management, Technicolor Much of the focus in assessing the growth
of the Internet of Things has stemmed from
the automatic connectivity and interaction
among devices without human intervention.
At some point, however, the objective of
IoT is to make the lives of people better.
As the relationship between IoT and the
human experience is explored to develop
customer facing applications, it will be
important to ensure seamless integration
across devices. In 2012, Technicolor saw
the need to interconnect all IoT devices
and applications, regardless of brand or
manufacturer. This led to the development
of Qeo, a communications framework built
on Linux design, which made its public
debut in 2013. Since then, Technicolor has
joined an industry consortium, AllSeen
Alliance, and is contributing the work it’s
done with Qeo.
In this Q&A, Technicolor Director of
Product Management Danny Lousberg
shares his insights on the challenges
related to IoT, how Qeo can help to
overcome those challenges, and the work
Technicolor is doing with AllSeen Alliance.
Q: What are some of the challenges that you believe must be
overcome in order for IoT to achieve its full potential?
Danny: Users have come to expect a certain level of user
experience. You think of the Apple ecosystem where everything
fits nicely together and it just works out of the box. The user
experience in that environment is just top notch. But the only
way that is achieved is by controlling the full end-to-end solution.
Every component of the solution that’s brought to market is
controlled by the same entity.
Now in reality people don’t buy all of their devices from a sin gle
vendor. This is especially true in the context of the Internet of
Things, which includes television sets, home security systems,
IT cameras, and so much more. So, at Technicolor, we believe
that the industry needs to find a way to bring about a highly
integrated user experience – an experience that is 100 percent
on par with users’ expectations – in a multi-vendor environment.
In order to do that you need standards. You need to agree on a
way of working together. You need to agree on how these devices
communicate with each other.

3. A Conversation with
Danny Lousberg
Director of Product
Management, Technicolor
THE FUTURE TRUST technicolor 3
The other thing that I would say, regarding the user experience,
is that what we have to avoid the temptation to introduce more
interfaces for consumers. I don’t think consumers are typically
looking for more devices that they need to configure, install,
operate. They are not necessarily interested in the complexity of
managing individual apps differently on a variety of devices.
We believe there is demand for technology that is integrated
so that people can actually get more free time – and not spend
more time figuring out how they can get their devices to share
information.
So this problem statement has several implications when it
comes to developing integrated IoT solutions. For instance, it
points to a need and desire for intelligent devices that can make
decisions on behalf of the user without asking the user what th ey
need to do. Intelligent devices need data from which to make to
make intelligent decisions. This means that sharing that data in
a standardized way is going to be the enabler of truly intellig ent
devices. And these, are the key issues that need to be managed
in order to achieve the full potential of IoT.
Q: Is there currently a standards body, or industry
consortium, focused on IoT interoperability?
Danny: Yes, there is now. When we started developing Qeo,
we found that there were a couple of initiatives in the market
that were trying to do at least part of what we set out to do with
Qeo. However, none of them really went all the way we thought
they needed to go. We felt there was an absence of vision that
stretched as far as what we had in mind for Qeo.
In 2013, however, we started working with AllJoyn, an open
source project designed to let smart devices recognize each other
and share resources and information. This group was looking at
the same kind of problems that we were trying to solve, and tha t
is why at the beginning of 2014, we joined the AllSeen Alliance,
an open source nonprofit consortium providing open source IoT
for widespread adoption of products, systems and services. This
group is leveraging the work AllJoyn has done. Today, Technicolor
is contributing to the alliance, and offering the vision we had when
we began developing with Qeo.
Q: When we think about IoT, we often think about about
machine-to-machine (M2M) communications, without human
interaction. But it looks like with Qeo, you’re really talking
about the point where the Internet of Things talks to people,
or the interface between people and IoT.
Danny: When you look at what’s happening with a lot of IoT
devices, what they’ve been trying to do is create a vertical
ecosystem in which a specific device is communicating with a
specific back-end server. Usually, that server lives somewhere
in the cloud, where it is tasked with tackling a specific use ca se.
This can translate into a highly fragmented situation for IoT, in
which devices and applications battle for a piece of end-user
mindshare and eyeballs.

4. THE FUTURE TRUST technicolor 4
A Conversation with
Danny Lousberg
Director of Product
Management, Technicolor
The solution to this challenge lies in integration and
interoperability.
That’s why, at Technicolor, we believe the Internet of Things is
inherently different from machine-to-machine communication.
Machine-to-machine communication, as it has been classically
proposed, is really meant to solve large-scale problems for a big
group of devices that are all trying to work together in a larger
environment that is not necessarily controlled by the end user.
But end-user control is something that we’d like to introduce to
the Internet of Things, using Qeo and AllSeen. The whole goal of
designing Qeo was to make sure that you can make eye-catching
applications and allow devices to do what people really want
them to do in their homes. The key, however, is to avoid making
consumes rely on a single individual user interface for that.
So what Qeo really set out to do is standardize the way that
devices from different brands, different manufacturers, and
different service providers work together.
An example that I always give is the one of a simple home climate
control. Suppose that the temperature of a living room is too hot.
There are a number of ways that devices in the home can work
together to solve that problem in an automated and cost-effective
manner. The air conditioning (AC) system and a central heating
system provided by one vendor can interact with automated
window blinds provided by another company to achieve a desired
room temperature with the lowest use of energy.
Now, if those systems cannot efficiently communicate and
interoperate with each other, then the only thing that the heating
system can do is turn down the heat. The only thing that the AC
can do is turn up the AC, and the only thing the window blinds can
do is close or open the blinds.
What we are proposing is to enable all these systems to rely
on each other’s data, using the same communications protocol
and using the same data models. They can then collaborate
automatically to make an informed decision on what the best
course of action would be to achieve the desired temperature in
the room.
Q: It sounds like you’re talking about an application layer
standard for the Internet of Things.
Danny: Absolutely. With Qeo we designed a wire protocol that
lives in the IP space. So it is indeed a Layer 4 and up area of
activity. It can take care of things such as discovering devices
in the home, and devices connected on a home network. When
this is done effectively, it does away with the need to configure
appliance-specific devices.
Imagine one logo that you can take for granted, and assures
you that if the device has this logo, then all of the functions that
you as a user would expect from such a device are also going to
be made available on the home network and beyond using the
Internet Protocol.

5. THE FUTURE TRUST technicolor 5
A Conversation with
Danny Lousberg
Director of Product
Management, Technicolor
And the discovery process around data is taken care of, so
integration is infinitely easier. You don’t have to say which
device you need to connect to. The devices and applications
will simply find each other. As the full implications of this
capability become understood, it will unleash a new wave
of innovation for applications and services. It will be a huge
instigator for new ideas.

6. ABOUT TECHNICOLOR
With more than 99 years of experience in entertainment innovation, Technicolor serves an international base of entertainment, software, and gaming customers. The company
is a leading provider of production, postproduction, and distribution services to content creators and distributors. Technicolor is one of the world’s largest film processors; the largest independent manufacturer and distributor of DVDs (including Blu-ray Disc); and a leading global supplier of set-top boxes and gateways. The company also operates an Intellectual Property and Licensing business unit.
For more information: www.technicolor.com
Contact Information
Published by the Thought Leadership Team
ritu.asthana@technicolor.com
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