Tell us about your role at your company and your company’s focus?
NXP is a solutions provider for purpose-built technologies that enable end devices to think, connect, and act intelligently and securely.
I'm a Marketing Director in our Wireless Connectivity Solutions product line where I'm responsible for driving NXP's leadership and growth in the Home Control market.
As part of this responsibility, I also represent NXP on the Board of Directors for both Thread Group and Connectivity Standards Alliance, contributing a perspective developed from engaging with product makers and platform providers to bring their smart, connected solutions to market.
What inspired your team to get involved with Thread Group?
As a founding member of the Zigbee Alliance (now Connectivity Standards Alliance), we had deep expertise in low power networking. The concept of an IP-based low power and secure mesh networking protocol resonated well as a way to address many of the needs of consumers for the smart home we saw at the time - simple, reliable, and secure.
The IP foundation was also a way to unify technologies and scale the smarthome market from early adopters to mass market. We were eager to workwith Nest (now Google) and the other Thread Group founding companiesto enable this inflection point in the industry by expanding the wellestablished and widely deployed IP protocol to edge devices
What are some ways your organization is using Thread today?
First of all, we create implementations for technologies like Thread - silicon and software - that provide product makers a foundation to build and deploy their smart home and building products. We also share our insights and expertise about Thread to our customers helping them in their product strategies and execution journey. On the flip side, we take the experiences of working with customers to contribute to Thread Group in its efforts. Lastly, since Thread is a complementary connectivity technology to other standards such as Matter, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth LE, we are equally as involved in other IoT standards organizations to drive synergy and reduce fragmentation.
What is one thing you’ve learned from other Thread Group members that has influenced your work?
Implementing, deploying and maintaining connectivity is complex! It takes a village! It truly takes collaboration from the various aspects of the industry - silicon, solutions, ecosystems/platforms, device makers, regional perspectives, and more - to ease the complexity and drive adoption. It's not just about the technology - as technically innovative and interesting as it can be, there is much more to understand and address for the technology to have a valuable impact people's lives.
Do you have any advice/ insights for companies or developers looking to get started with Thread?
Don't sit on the sidelines! Of course, beginning your Thread adoption efforts with a silicon'/solutions partner like NXP is the way to go. However, getting engaged directly with Thread Group in whatever form is possible widens your touch points into the Thread community giving you more insights and methods to drive success for your company.