October 2024 - In this interview, Roland Hechwartner summarizes the latest developments from oneM2M’s 66th Technical Plenary. In addition to chairing oneM2M’s Technical Plenary (TP), Roland is responsible for the coordination of the overall management of the technical work within the TP and its Working Groups (WGs). He is also a representative of Deutsche Telekom (DT).
Q: Would you begin with an overview of the key developments at TP#66?
RH: We held TP66 as a hybrid event with several members joining us in-person at ETSI’s offices in Sophia Antipolis (France) over the 9 to 13 September period. In addition to the usual working group (WG) activities to progress oneM2M’s standardization roadmap, we also spent time on external developments that have a relevance to oneM2M and the IoT ecosystem. From past discussions, readers might recall the importance of making oneM2M accessible to the developer community. ETSI and oneM2M are working on software-related initiatives to expand the software and training resources that are already available.
We also spent time exploring the European Data Act, its long-term implications for data sharing and what this means in an IoT and semantic interoperability context.
Our members also started preparations to contribute to the IEEE’s 10th World Forum on the Internet of Things where several industry and standardization officials will share their insights into IoT standardization.
Q: Let us begin by hearing about the ETSI-oneM2M software initiative. What developments are taking place on that front?
RH: There are two parts to that development. The first concerns ETSI’s Software Development Groups (SDGs) which are tailored for collaborative software development, in support of standardization. SDGs foster open communities with meritocracy-based governance.
We learned from Silvia Almagia, ETSI’s Director of Software and Standards, that SDGs publish software outputs using a choice of software licenses, including open source. As such they provide a toolbox for quick prototyping, experimentation and new use-case validation. This helps ETSI groups that are working on future network technologies to accelerate standardization cycles and optimize their quality. SDGs also act as a bridge between Standardization and Research, as the code is adopted by research projects and new contributions received. Last but not least, they are a vehicle to promote and facilitate adoption of ETSI standards among software development communities and open-source projects.
Participation is open to ETSI members, non-members and individuals with regular releases every six months. Some of the recent SDGs include Open Source Mano (management and orchestration of network functions virtualization), Tera Flow SDN (cloud-native controller for software defined networks to enable smart connectivity services for future networks beyond 5G), OpenSlice (service based operations support system to deliver network slice as a service), OpenCAPIF (common API frameworks to expose and consume APIs in a secure and consistent way).
The second part of this development is a proposal that oneM2M members are developing to launch an SDG alongside oneM2M’s specification development activities. The main software parts will be based on the ACME common services entity (CSE) implementation and several tools that are used in oneM2M.
Q: You also spoke about the European Data Act. What are its implications of the IoT community?
RH: To learn about this topic, we had a presentation from Joachim Koss (Exacta). In it, he introduced the European Data Act which is a regulatory framework to harmonize rules on fair access to and use of data. The regulation went into force on 11 January 2024 and, after a transition phase, will be European wide law after 12 September 2025.
The Data Act gives individuals and businesses more control over their data through a reinforced data portability right. They will be able to copy or transfer data easily across different services, where the data are generated through smart objects, machines and devices. It will also be easier to transfer data to and between service providers. This will encourage more actors, including SMEs, to participate in the data economy.
This Regulation applies to several entities. The first group includes manufacturers of connected products placed on the market in the European Union (EU) and providers of related services, irrespective of the place of establishment of those manufacturers and providers. The second group consists of EU users of connected products or related services. The third group comprises data holders, irrespective of their place of establishment, that make data available to data recipients in the EU. And the final group includes data recipients in the EU to whom data are made available.
The discussion covered highlights of the regulation and its impacts on existing and future standardization work. Technical standards such as ETSI’s SAREF, and its suite of ontologies, as well as oneM2M seem well placed to support the EU Data Act, especially when considering the testing and certification frameworks that are available for oneM2M implementations.
Q: What plans are oneM2M members making for the IEEE’s 10th World Forum on IoT?
RH: There are two events planned to coincide with IEEE WF IoT. Both have been organized and planned by Prof. JaeSeung Song, who is the oneM2M TP Vice-Chair, and Distinguished Professor at the Sejong University. On November 11th, there will be an industry forum titled "oneM2M Global IoT Standards and Its Ecosystem". This will provide an in-depth exploration of oneM2M's pivotal role as a leading global IoT standards initiative. Over the years, oneM2M has played a crucial part in developing a variety of common IoT service layer functions such as registration, discovery, geo-location, and semantics. These features have evolved across several releases, with the most recent being Release 4, which was published in 2023. As technology continues to advance, oneM2M is now working on standardizing new features aimed at further enhancing the integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) with IoT platforms. This standardization also focuses on enabling seamless interworking with blockchain systems, supporting the development of digital twin technologies, and advancing the application of IoT in Metaverse environments that emulate real-world scenarios. The following four agenda topics will set the standardization context and lead to a presentation of oneM2M’s roadmap and implementation support resources.
- Introduction to oneM2M global IoT standards
- Enablers to IoT platform (AI, Metaverse, Blockchain, and Edge Computing)
- Open and Unified Framework to Interconnect Sensing IoT devices
- IoT Testing, Certification, and open-source communities
The aim of the industry forum is to give attendees an opportunity to hear from experts through engaging talks and panel discussions. These sessions will highlight next-generation IoT standards features, as well as the broader ecosystem that supports their implementation and growth.
There is a second session planned for November 12th. This industry forum will focus on the data standards landscape and an analysis of standardization gaps. The forum’s data emphasis relates to developments linked to the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Accessing data and applying high-quality data sets are fundamental to the success of advanced technologies and services such as AI learning, blockchain integration, digital twin simulations, and distributed data processing via edge computing systems. As data continues to proliferate in scale and complexity, there is an urgent demand for standardized technologies. This is to ensure interoperability, maintain data quality, and safeguard privacy throughout the entire data lifecycle — from its collection to its analysis and eventual utilization.
Public and private sectors are actively working on the standardization of technologies capable of managing large-scale IoT data. oneM2M is leading one of the key global efforts in this space to advance standards for AI/ML-driven IoT data.
In parallel, international organizations such as "ITU-T SG-20" are focusing on AI and smart city data standards, while "ISO" is concentrating on database language standards for data storage and retrieval. Additionally, "ETSI TC SmartM2M" is working on data semantics standards, and ETSI Industry Standards Expert Groups are focusing on cross-domain context information management (ISG CIM) as well as permissioned distributed ledger standards, which are essential for establishing data trust (ISG PDL). Regional Standards Development Organizations (SDOs), such as TTA (South Korea) and TSDSI (India) are also contributing by developing standards for IoT and smart city data.
The 12 November industry forum will provide attendees with an understanding the status of data-related standardization activities and provide the foundations to explore standardization gaps. Speakers from different standardization initiatives will share their knowledge according to the following agenda:
- oneM2M: Global IoT service platform standards
- ETSI TC SmartM2M: Standards for smart things, semantics and ontologies / EU DATA ACT
- ETSI ISG CIM: Cross-domains Context Information management
- ETSI ISG PDL: Permissioned distributed Ledger for Data Trust
- ISO: Database language standards for data storage and retrieval
- TSDSI India: Standardized platform for smart city and agriculture
- TTA Korea: Data in IoT and Smart City
- ITU-T SG20: Data analytics, sharing, processing and management, including big data aspects, of IoT and SC&C
The forum will also emphasize the importance of cooperation between various standards bodies to address these gaps and align efforts globally for the future of data management and usage.
Q: In addition to these discussions, what progress do you have to report in relation to oneM2M’s Working Groups?
RH: The Requirements & Domain Models (RDM) working Group was chaired by Massimo Vanetti (SBS). The meeting made progress on work related to Release 5. Notable items included progress on the TS-0023 on SDT based Information Model & Mapping for Vertical Industries, as well as the TR-0069 on Metaverse IoT. There were also additional discussions on use cases to apply oneM2M for IoT systems.
Peter Niblett (IBM) chaired the System Design & Security (SDS) working group which agreed on new inputs for TS-0003 Security Solutions, TS-0041 oneM2M-SensorThings interworking, TS-0009 Http Protocol Binding and TS-0022 Field Device Configuration. Beginning from now, enhancements and changes are expected to the release 5 versions of TS-0008 COAP Protocol Binding and TS-0022. Furthermore, additional information was presented and agreed on Sensor Things API interworking as well as to TR-0071 which deals with the integration of the NGSI-LD API into oneM2M.
Bob Flynn (Exacta) chaired the Testing & Developers Ecosystem (TDE) WG. There were discussions to update members about the git-based specification development methodology and new content for the oneM2M recipes page. As regards our initiatives to reach student and developer communities, there was a discussion on the planning of an oneM2M international hackathon event in 2024. It will run from October to November 2024. The intention is to target attendees from universities and SMEs across USA, Europe, and Asia.
Q: In closing, what are the plans for the coming TPs?
RH: The next Technical Plenary TP#67 will be organized as a hybrid meeting. It will be co-located and run collaboratively with the IEEE WF IoT in Ottawa, Canada, from November 10 to 15, 2024.
