The Zigbee Alliance meeting in Seattle recently showed just how far this technology is from the computing mainstream.

A very small company called Ember was basically able to "take over."

Ember raised itself to "promoter" status within the alliance, which now has 70 members. Ember sponsored the Seattle meeting. Ember delivered the main address.

Then, the next week, Ember made the big news, having its implementation chosen as the test bed for Zigbee compliance.

It's good that Ember is doing all this. It's bad, very bad, that Ember appears to be doing this alone.

The large members of the alliance apparently do not believe that the process control markets for which Zigbee is now applicable are big enough to invest in heavily. They're all pleased to have a virtual start-up lead the way.

One of two things are going to happen. Either Ember will start signing some big contracts in the next few months, and deliver solutions that pay-off for clients quickly. or it will be unable to close deals, and Zigbee will languish for another year, perhaps until a new version of the standard is available.

Meanwhile the "industry" (what there is of it) will move its attention to Detroit, where next month we'll have the Sensor Expo & Conference. While Zigbee is one way to link sensors into networks, it's not the only way. Let's see if other approaches are doing better.