IOT: Islands of Isolated Things?

Bob O’Donnell at Tech.pinions on the need for standards for the Internet of Things to take off:

While it’s unlikely that all the specific needs for potential vertical industries can be determined by a single set of standards, there’s no question in my mind that to even start the process of reaching millions of new “things” (let alone billions of them), significant industry-wide standards efforts around communications protocols, data structures and more need to get started—and soon. We have seen a few interesting efforts—including the Qualcomm driven AllJoyn initiative—but we need to see other larger players either join this organization or drive the creation of alternative or, preferably, complementary initiatives that can start to build the links that will be necessary to fulfill the dream of IOT.