Standards Alliances Showcase Models for Growth and Collaboration
Two standards organizations are highlighting strategies for ecosystem growth. The Connectivity Standards Alliance is actively promoting membership to foster collaboration on IoT standards and create seamless tech ecosystems. Separately, the Association for Materials Protection and Performance (AMPP) is celebrating five years of post-merger growth, citing expanded global membership and standards access as key successes.
- The Connectivity Standards Alliance's primary initiative, Matter, is a royalty-free home automation connectivity standard designed to unify disparate smart home ecosystems like those from Apple, Amazon, and Google. Recent updates have expanded its scope to include appliances, EV chargers, and energy management systems. - To engage the Chinese market, the CSA established the Connectivity Standards Alliance Member Group China (CMGC), which focuses on local market education, developer training, and joint marketing for products using Alliance technologies. Chinese technology companies like Huawei and OPPO are board members of the global Connectivity Standards Alliance. - In March 2024, the CSA's Product Security Working Group launched a new IoT Device Security Specification, which harmonizes major global standards from bodies like ETSI and NIST to create a single, comprehensive certification program. - The CSA offers multiple tiers of membership, including "Participant" and "Promoter" levels that grant voting rights and influence over the development of standards like Matter. - AMPP was formed in 2021 through the merger of NACE International (the National Association of Corrosion Engineers) and SSPC (The Society for Protective Coatings), which brought together a combined 145 years of experience in corrosion and protective coatings. - Since the 2021 merger, AMPP has grown its global membership by nearly 26%, from 31,780 to over 40,000 members across more than 130 countries. - AMPP's governance is split into two structures: a 501(c)(6) organization for member services like certification and advocacy, and a 501(c)(3) "Global Center" that focuses on standards, research, and educational events. - As part of its membership model, AMPP provides access to its full portfolio of standards at no additional cost and has unified the separate certification programs of the legacy organizations into a single system.
