The ZigBee Alliance says that Walters’ extensive experience working in a standards organisation from inception to market adoption makes him the ideal candidate to help guide the continued adoption of ZigBee standards across the IoT industry.
Walters’ extensive experience working in a standards organisation from inception to market adoption makes him the ideal candidate to help guide the continued adoption of ZigBee standards across the IoT industry.
“I am very fortunate to have had the opportunity to work in the IoT market for so long,” said Mark Walters, Vice President of Strategic Development for the ZigBee Alliance. “My experience in the industry has made me tremendously excited to join the team and work for such a large, diverse organisation like the ZigBee Alliance.”
Walters plans to develop the current branding and standards to increase awareness and understanding of ZigBee technology. He will be strongly focused on the approaching launch of ZigBee 3.0, a release that will help reduce market fragmentation and further promote the suitability of ZigBee standards for the IoT. In addition, he will craft partnerships and agreements with other organisations to increase interoperability across the IoT. This work will be especially important in the smart home market, where the ZigBee Alliance is consolidation processes to support an easy and meaningful consumer experience.
“We are pleased to have Mark join the team, and we look forward to the benefit his knowledge and experience will provide as we serve our members,” said Tobin J. M. Richardson, president and CEO of the ZigBee Alliance. “We believe that Mark will help drive the Alliance to reduce fragmentation, increase market adoption and deliver the promise to consumers in our core mission of interoperability.”
“Mark is a qualified leader well entrenched in the IoT industry. We believe that his experience with wireless standards and vision for marketing ZigBee 3.0 will be of great benefit to our members and the industry as a whole. Mark understands the need for an open, global standard to ensure plug and play interoperability among products, and with the other ZigBee Alliance team members, we look forward to promoting and delivering that standard.” said Tobin J. M. Richardson.
ZigBee is a larger organisation with more diverse standards and I’m looking forward to bringing my experience in strategy and development to help ensure interoperability in the wireless industry, said Mark Walters.
M2M Now asked Beecham Research for its views on this announcement. Principal analyst, Saverio Romeo says: “ZigBee has to find a role in the story of IoT at the edge. At the moment, we talk a lot about Bluetooth, BLE in particular, in association with PAN-based connected devices and in-door solution such as beacons. In the smart home space, there are several initiatives using different connectivity ideas. We talk a lot about low power connectivity solutions in different mesh-network context. But, if you see in the conference programmes, we do not really see much about ZigBee. ZigBee needs a sort of boost. ZigBee needs to get its personality out in this increasingly crowded space. Perhaps this is a move in that sense.”
