The Industry IoT Consortium uses the term "liaison" to refer to coordination of activities and efforts with organizations, through a number of mechanisms ranging from informal to formal agreements. Note that the Industry IoT Consortium is one party in a liaison relationship: The term "liaison partner" refers to the other organization in the relationship.

Broadly speaking, the Liaison Working Group has 3 areas of responsibility:

• Operational
• Strategic
• Coordination

Operational responsibilities include:

• Acting as the central point within the Industry IoT Consortium for communicating with partner organizations.
• Evaluating benefits to the Industry IoT Consortium of proposed liaisons.
• Identifying internal stakeholder groups within the Industry IoT Consortium that would benefit for a proposed liaison.
• Drafting liaison agreements with candidate partner organizations:
  • Making recommendations for approval to the Industry IoT Consortium Steering Committee on proposed liaison agreements.
  • Directing both internal and external communications regarding the focus of the liaison.

Strategic responsibilities include:

• Building and coordinating coalitions between governments, standards bodies and open source organizations.
• Identifying gaps in the portfolio of Industry IoT Consortium relationships and making strategic recommendations to the Industry IoT Consortium Steering Committee to help grow the ecosystem.

Coordination responsibilities include:

• Coordinating and working with internal stakeholder groups.
• Coordinating with the Industry IoT Consortium Marketing team on press coverage related to liaison agreements.
• Coordinating with the Industry IoT Consortium Steering Committee Legal Sub-Committee and Industry IoT Consortium legal counsel for review of agreements when needed.

Liaisons are not meant to substitute for the Industry IoT Consortium membership. The liaison process is meant to improve coordination with similar organizations. If an organization wishes to participate broadly in Industry IoT Consortium work, that organization should become a member of the Industry IoT Consortium.

The primary deliverables of the Liaison Working Group are liaison agreements. The agreements developed by the Liaison Working Group may:

• Enable the Industry IoT Consortium and its liaison partner to pursue related and mutually beneficial goals (e.g., exchange of information, definitions, testbeds, use cases, demonstration projects, technical specifications, standards and harmonize architectures).
• Identify collaboration areas
• Document the commitments from both organizations.

The Liaison Working Group was created due to the importance of the liaison work for the Industry IoT Consortium, the desire to develop coalitions in the ecosystem and to help execute on the relevant, identified priorities and mission of the Industry IoT Consortium.

See our expanding list here.

Please email the Liaison Working Group co-chairs here.

The IIC is committed to publishing technology specific frameworks – such as Industrial Internet Security Framework (IISF), Industrial Internet Connectivity Framework, Business Strategy and Innovation Framework (BSIF) – that collectively comprise the IIC Industrial Internet of Things suite. The IIRA is the foundation for this collective body of work and along with the IIC Vocabulary document ensures consistency across its breadth and depth.

The IIRA has been widely used in the IIC's testbeds that span verticals such as smart grid, transportation, smart cities, agriculture, industrial maintenance and others. The application of the IIRA in these testbeds assists in their system architecture design and provides validation and feedback to the IIRA for its continuing improvement and evolution.

The IIC has been developing an IIRA Template walking the user through the steps necessary to apply and align with the IIRA. IIC members have created several documents which represent detailed analyses of the alignment between the IIRA and selected testbeds, one of which has been published as a whitepaper accessible to the public.

This new version of the IIRA has the following major updates: As the IIRA is applicable to a broad spectrum of public sector operations and private sector industries, the IIRA does not define a specific architecture. It does however include several example architecture concepts and patterns to assist IIoT System architects in defining the optimal pattern for their specific set of requirements.

Additional architecture patterns are being defined through the IIC testbed and technology frameworks processes and will be published as appropriate.

The IIRA provides significant insight into, and identification of, the requirements for architecting a truly interoperable IIoT system. The IIC, through its formal liaisons with various open standards and industry consortia, collaborates through sharing and feedback during the deliverable development process thereby providing bi-lateral and unilateral sharing of requirements, building consensus, and resulting in complementary rather than competing guidance and standards.