Connected living has come a long way from its earliest days, even if its earliest days haven't been all that long ago. Though there have been some issues along the way, there have also been some substantial gains in the field. One of the newest advancements, meanwhile, comes from Deutsche Telekom (News - Alert), which recently landed the 2014 European Visionary Innovation Leadership Award from Frost & Sullivan for the development of QIVICON, a system that helps to drive the connected living lifestyle by helping to better organize connected homes.

The QIVICON system is a complete platform meant to incorporate various devices under one central banner, bringing several QIVICON partners together to cover areas like security, convenience, and energy efficiency all from one point. Devices that can fall under the QIVICON banner include things like standard appliances and consumer electronics to complete segments of household operations, including complete security systems and heating and air conditioning systems. This actually serves two separate purposes at once: not only does QIVICON allow users to operate these technologies, contributing to safety, security and comfort in the home, but it also allows users to monitor electrical usage from these products and apply controls as necessary to help reduce the electricity used by said appliances.

The QIVICON platform, at last report, has generated quite a bit of interest from other countries as well. Since QIVICON has been available in Germany since late 2013, it's drawn attention not only throughout the European Union (EU), but also beyond. Thus, Deutsche Telekom has been looking to expand its lineup, but will be focusing on the EU first, with plans to bring the service to what Deutsche Telekom’s VP of Connected Home, Holger Knoepke (News - Alert), calls “...promising prospects outside of the EU.” Knoepke went on to detail how currently there were over 30 companies working as partners with Deutsche Telekom to bring devices to the QIVICON platform, and by the end of the year, it was expected that there would be about 50 such partners in place.

Controlling the smart home has always been something of an issue. Late last year — about the same time QIVICON was emerging on the German market — we heard about Traverse City's Andrew Schmitt, who had his share of problems getting the connected home hooked up and operating. Schmitt's experiences had him drawing on both the  iPhone and iPad to get all the systems running, and that's a recipe for an overly-complicated disaster in the still-nascent connected home space. But we're already seeing a lot of movement toward making the connected home simpler. Remember that Apple (News - Alert) has been seen working in this arena with the HomeKit, which wasn't so much about the devices but rather about making the devices easier and simpler to work with, a development devoutly to be wished by pretty much anyone wanting to deal in the connected home space.

The further we go in terms of development for connected homes, the more likely we are to see developments like QIVICON, and also like HomeKit and beyond. While the devices are very important, and development on this front is quite rapid, keeping all these devices under control and careful on the power supply will also be important. That's where developments like QIVICON really step in, and offer us some terrific new possibilities by making devices more accessible.