Overview
ISO/IEC 30118-10:2021 - Information technology - Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF) Specification - Part 10: Cloud API for cloud services specification - defines the functional requirements for the OCF Cloud-to-Cloud API. Published in 2021 and prepared by the Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF), this document specifies how cloud services interoperate to expose, manage and synchronize IoT devices and resources across clouds. Key objectives include secure device discovery, cloud-to-cloud synchronization, event notification, and consistent API definitions for smart home and IoT ecosystems.
Key topics and technical requirements
- Scope and architecture alignment: Describes OCF Cloud architecture and alignment with ISO/IEC 17789 (cloud computing reference architecture).
- Authentication & authorization: Requirements for secure access, including OAuth2.0 access token scopes and mechanisms for account linking between cloud services.
- Account linking API: Functional behaviors for linking user accounts across OCF clouds to enable cross-cloud device control.
- Devices API: Functional requirements for device lifecycle operations such as:
- Retrieve all devices
- Retrieve a single device
- Retrieve a specific resource on a device
- Update a resource on a device
- Events API: Subscription and notification model covering:
- Subscription requests and responses
- Notification payloads and responses
- Event authentication (create and verify event signatures)
- Subscribe/unsubscribe flows for device-level and resource-level events
- Operational flows and examples: Representative flows (OAuth app registration, account linking, device retrieval, resource updates, subscription lifecycle).
- OpenAPI definition: Inclusion of an OpenAPI 2.0 specification for the Cloud API to support standard tooling and developer integration.
Practical applications
- Enabling cross-cloud interoperability for smart home devices (appliances, locks, cameras, sensors).
- Standardizing cloud-to-cloud synchronization and eventing for multi-vendor IoT ecosystems.
- Implementing secure account linking and access delegation for third-party services.
- Building cloud services that need to query, update, or subscribe to device state and resource changes across cloud domains.
- Providing a reference API (OpenAPI) to accelerate developer adoption and interoperability testing.
Who should use this standard
- Cloud service providers and IoT platform vendors
- Device manufacturers implementing OCF models
- System integrators and solution architects working on smart home/commercial IoT deployments
- Security architects designing OAuth2.0-based cloud integrations
- Standards bodies and implementers aligning products with OCF cloud interoperability
Related standards
Keywords: ISO/IEC 30118-10, OCF Cloud API, cloud-to-cloud API, IoT interoperability, Devices API, Events API, OAuth2.0, OpenAPI.
Open preview (PDF)Information technology – Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF) Specification — Part 10: Cloud API for cloud services specification
