Australian software developer Two Bulls is branching into the Internet of Things with the spinout of Higgns, a company that will market its name-branded IoT platform to device manufacturers.

The Higgns software platform leverages the AllJoyn open source framework, created by Qualcomm to enable IoT device interaction and governed by the AllSeen Alliance that counts Microsoft, LG, Philips, Canon and Sony among its 100-plus members.

The Higgns software platform first made waves at last year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES), and was used by Qualcomm to demonstrate central control and configuration of a number of AllJoyn-enabled smart home devices.

The high levels of interest generated at the event planted the seed in Two Bulls founder Noah Harlan’s mind that this type of platform warranted its own business entity to drive its growth and adoption.

“As we worked on [the solution] in preparation for CES in 2015, the product became clearer and as we got a sense of the market need for what we had created, the plan to spin it out came into focus,” he told IoT Hub.

“Once we had clients and partners lining up to use Higgns, we realised it was time to put it on its own bottom.”

Higgns faces some stiff competition from the likes of Google, Samsung and Apple, who have all released their own interpretations of what a smart home should look like.

Harlan said that Higgns’ vision of IoT architecture differs from that of its competitors in that it isn’t predicated on the cloud or dedicated hardware.

“We believe that the future of IoT pushes compute, configuration, storage and more out to the edge in a hardware agnostic way,” he explained.

“When you’re out at the edge and operating within a proximal network, you’re operating with an order of magnitude or more of lower latency, you mitigate security and privacy exposure, and you are able to scale in any direction with trivial marginal cost to infrastructure.

“Most current competitors are relying on the design patterns of web and infrastructure 2.0 to build their IoT solutions and we believe that that faces a finite upper bound on capability.”

Harlan said that Higgns is currently working with companies, both local and global, to develop a number of IoT solutions.

These include Victorian technology companies Grey Innovation and Planet Innovation, and LIFX, a smart lighting company founded in Melbourne, now based in Silicon Valley, California.

Harlan believes the A/NZ region has a lot to offer to the Internet of Things.

“We have a great combination of fantastic engineering schools pumping out enormous talent, a great attitude towards innovation and a range of companies leading the way,” he said, referring to companies such as LIFX and Atlassian.

“Furthermore, the current Australian [Government] has made technology innovation a major initiative and we believe that this will only help to spur the A/NZ region into creating the products and services that will populate an IoT world.”

Harlan is excited about what the Internet of Things could bring, and Higgns’ role in the future to come.

“IoT offers the chance to rethink the infrastructure that defines the world around us,” he explained.

“Where once we lived and worked in solid state machines whose programming was defined when the building was constructed by the wires laid in the walls, we now have a future where everything is reconfigurable on the fly.

“We believe that Higgns provides the infrastructure to build that future.”