The Open Interconnect Consortium (OIC) and its IoTivity device interoperability protocol is rapidly making up ground on its closest rival AllJoyn, and has this week announced two new partnerships that significantly improve its position in the market. The most prominent is a deal with the HyperCat Consortium, a group of companies that are developing a standard that would do for data what a protocol like IoTivity would do for actual physical things – make it discoverable and therefore accessible to other devices to gain greater insight or functionality. The second deal is with the EnOcean Alliance, where the two organizations have signed a liaison agreement to encourage greater collaboration between members of the OIC and EnOcean – an alliance that…