Global Tech Companies Form 'Trusted Tech Alliance'

- The alliance is founded on five key principles: transparent corporate governance, secure development and operations with independent assessment, robust supply chain security, support for an open digital ecosystem, and adherence to the rule of law and data protection. - Several members are actively collaborating on projects relevant to embedded systems, demonstrating the alliance's principles in action even before its formal establishment. For example, Ericsson is building its Connected Vehicle Cloud on top of Microsoft's Connected Vehicle Platform, aiming to simplify the development and scaling of services like over-the-air software updates and fleet management for automakers. - In the realm of IoT and edge computing, Nokia and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are collaborating to create 5G and edge cloud strategies, which include the development of reference architectures. Their partnership focuses on commercializing IoT use cases by leveraging AWS Greengrass, Amazon Machine Learning, and Nokia's Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) and IMPACT platform. - Another relevant area of collaboration is in secure connectivity for IoT devices. The Trusted Connectivity Alliance (TCA), an organization with a similar focus on security, has been developing specifications for eSIMs (embedded SIMs) that are crucial for the secure and remote provisioning of IoT devices. - The TCA's eUICC Profile Package specification is a standardized format for remotely loading subscriptions onto eSIMs. Version 3.3 of this specification introduces a "lightweight" IoT minimal profile, designed to address the challenges of managing network-constrained IoT devices with limited bandwidth. - This focus on secure connectivity extends to 5G, with the TCA's specifications aligning with 3GPP Release 17 to support enhanced 5G functionality. This is critical for emerging embedded applications that will rely on the low latency and high reliability of 5G networks. - For students interested in the software side of embedded systems, it's noteworthy that many of the member companies are significant contributors to and users of open-source technologies. While the Trusted Tech Alliance itself has not announced specific open-source projects, the broader ecosystem offers many tools for secure embedded development. - In the automotive sector, the collaboration between Ericsson and Microsoft utilizes Microsoft's Connected Vehicle Platform (MCVP), which is built on Azure and provides a consistent platform for in-vehicle infotainment, advanced navigation, and autonomous driving functionalities. This integration is designed to reduce complexity and costs for car manufacturers in managing the lifecycle of connected vehicles.