M2M/Internet of Things

Confusion Abounds as Buzzwords Converge on Defining Internet of Things

By Gareth Noyes

Trends seem to have a life of their own, especially in technology. Clusters of thoughts and ideas converge to re-frame an idea or define something completely new and then buzzwords are born. But before they reach critical mass and gain widespread acceptance, they often go through painful phases where the same words are used, but we get lost between concepts and definitions. However, when good ideas solve real business problems, the buzzword sticks.

Take ‘The Cloud’ for example. Back at Oracle OpenWorld in 2008, Larry Ellison was quoted as saying:

“The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we've redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do. I can't think of anything that isn't cloud computing with all of these announcements. The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women's fashion. Maybe I'm an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It's complete gibberish. It's insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?”

In the same vein that Thomas Watson is often mocked for misunderstanding the potential of computers with his statement, “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers,” some mistakenly imply that Ellison misunderstood the opportunity, which was not the case. He was pointing out the process by which the market hypes buzzwords before we converge on widespread acceptance of their meaning. Roll forward to today, and the notion of The Cloud has gained widespread acceptance and the debate of what The Cloud is has subsided as everyone focuses on the opportunity it represents, and you’re more likely to hear people talk about what their cloud strategy actually is.

We see the same thing with ‘The Internet of Things (IoT)’ or ‘Software-defined networking (SDN).’ Whilst we continue the active dialogue re: the definition of what IoT is and how it differs from M2M, or how intelligent systems differ from embedded systems, what we’re seeing is the widespread acceptance of a growing trend which we’re still struggling to succinctly define. What is clear though, is that the industry is starting to focus on the opportunity it represents.

What’s your IoT strategy?

 

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Analytics and the ‘Internet of Things’

By Gareth Noyes

Analytics has become a major buzzword these days, whether in the realm of connected devices, the Internet of Things, web analytics or big data business analytics.  In the context of the Internet of Things, I thought I’d share some observations on different analytics paradigms and use cases.

One common analytics model is what could be termed “store-and-analyze-later,” where massive amounts of data are streamed up to cloud servers and Hadoop clusters for later analysis. The problem with this approach, especially given the ever increasing amounts of data, is that it doesn’t scale, the amount of data quickly overwhelms our ability to make sense of it. Compare that to a model where intelligence (gained from analytics) is tailored to the use case and system topology, leading to “intelligence where and when you need it”-- the notion of multi-tiered intelligence where edge devices have a configurable amount of autonomy and decision making authority, and no longer act as “dumb data generators.”

Clearly the right architecture is largely driven by the use case being addressed, and context matters. Take for example a predictive modeling scenario, where complex machine learning algorithms on powerful servers crunch through huge amounts of collected operational data to build a predictive failure model, for example, of a wind turbine. Once the model is generated “in the cloud” it can be exported to the turbine control system for more autonomous execution and refinement.

More and more startups appear in the analytics space, from real-time in-memory databases to full analytics platforms. One area of particular interest is around streaming analytics engines, quite opposite to the store-and-analyze-later scenario described earlier. Data is being processed and analyzed “on the fly.” This technology generally scales better to a multi-tiered analytics use case.

Yet another perspective of analytics, and one that’s becoming increasingly important for the Internet of Things, is what I would term one-way vs. closed-loop analytics. One-way analytics is effectively up streaming of data to the cloud for storage and visualization, largely requiring humans to make intelligent interpretations. Where it gets really interesting, is the closed-loop use case, where analytics either in the cloud or in aggregation points in the network, drive changes and control back to the edge device, or devices exchange analytics intelligence between each other.

Regardless of the type of analytics paradigm or use case, the one constant is that data and the ability to make sense of it, is becoming a critical differentiator for the Internet of Things.

 

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Healthcare and the 'Internet of Things'

By Santhosh Nair

The healthcare industry is embracing the 'Internet of Things.' From the advent of mHealth, to healthcare personnel bringing their own devices into the hospitals, to consolidations that are happening up and down the value chain, the healthcare industry is finally embracing its version of the Internet. It’s a topic that I discussed recently in a

Q&A session with Intel Embedded Community. With the ability to provide affordable care to the masses topping the lists of political and socioeconomic agendas globally, we need to make a lot more progress on this front.  Here are some on why we're still not where we need to be in terms of the global adoption and institutionalization of these concepts.

The first issue is infrastructure. Despite the advent of wireless technologies and the commoditization of electronics, the adoption rate has been extremely low in the healthcare space.  Machine-to-Machine (M2M) connectivity is the building block for interoperability in healthcare. If you ask the device manufacturers, most of these standards are already implemented. The challenge is the variations in implementation and the network effects that are taking place – there is almost no incentive for a device manufacturer to invest in an infrastructure that doesn’t yield the benefit.

The second issue is the life cycle costs. If you look at imaging systems, thousands of systems are introduced into the market every year. Therapeutic life-sustaining devices like infusion systems and defibrillators have an installed base of hundreds of thousands or even millions. Yet, a new design (big iron) happens every 10-15 years. The regulatory climate around these devices makes the manufacturers very cautious in introducing change and failure could be extremely costly. In addition, innovation is not happening at the software level so that the device is future proofed. Compare this with something like iPad/iTunes/Apps upgrades. Most get an upgrade once a week, and may not even know about it. With healthcare systems, annual upgrades are a luxury for most of these device classes, and the cost of these upgrades is prohibitive, since most of it is tied to hardware upgrades.

The final issue is trust. An industry will not adopt any technology that it doesn’t trust. This is the primary the reason why there is physical human interaction connected to mundane tasks like billing, orders, scheduling, etc. in a hospital. This is not just unique to healthcare, but is applicable to other sectors like aviation, energy, and transportation.  Now take banking for instance -- gone are the days when people went to banks for basic transactions. It is now done over the Internet or via an ATM machine. The financial industry has automated most of the mundane tasks, while saving costs on expensive resources (like personnel) to value added activities like relationship management, and complex transactions. They have done this successfully via an outstanding implementation of security – adopting a design for security across their system. 

These examples demonstrate the great divide between consumer-driven enterprise systems and industry-driven embedded systems. While the enterprise has flourished and matured over the last 20 years of the Internet revolution, embedded devices continued to be homegrown and crafted. A lot of the maturity and ubiquity of enterprise and consumer systems have not yet permeated into the embedded world.

But now the healthcare industry has come to an inflection point, where there is no choice but to adopt some of the advancements of the consumer infrastructure. And there are signs that the industry is moving in that direction, i.e., GE talking about industrial internet, Cisco talking about Internet of Things, IBM talking about Smart Planet. At the grassroots level, silicon vendors are building a lot of M2M technology at the source so as to make it easier to develop sensor-based technologies.

It's definitely an exciting time to be a part of this industry and to be contributing to the advancements in this space with solutions like the Wind River Intelligent Device Platform, which is designed to resolve all of this ambiguity and make it easier for the healthcare industry to embrace the infrastructure.  I look forward for what’s to come.

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Biggest Predictions for M2M

By Brian Vezza

With the end of the year around the corner, I've been thinking about what's to come on the machine-to-machine (M2M) front.  Overall, I believe we’ll see a tremendous acceleration in the investment and adoption of M2M devices, systems, applications and services.  This will be due to two primary factors: opportunity and necessity. 

The opportunity of M2M gets the most interest with predictions of tens of billions of new connected devices, Big Data, and “smart” systems being widespread across nearly every vertical market.  Estimates of trillions of dollars of shifting investments get everyone’s attention. In some ways though, the necessity driver may be more important than the opportunity driver over the next decade. Here are my thoughts:

There are two main reasons why necessity will drive M2M growth.  First, developed economies around the world have been remarkably steady in the growth of “per capita GDP”  which has averaged ~2% per year, in some cases for over 100 years.  This basically tells us that our standard of living has been steadily improving.  The two biggest drivers have been population growth and technology innovations. However, working age population growth has slowed around the world which may reduce the growth rate by half or more.  For example, according to McKinsey, in Western Europe, because there is no growth expected in the workforce, “100% of GDP growth must come from productivity gains.”  It will become absolutely essential for business leaders and governments to invest in “smart” technologies which have the potential for high growth and productivity improvements.  The second necessity reason is linked to the first.  Companies that adopt M2M and “smart” systems sooner will gain business model advantages over their competition.  This will force other companies to adapt and accelerate the cycle of adoption.

When combined, the opportunity and necessity of M2M will show stunning growth rates over the next decade or longer, transforming multiple industries, along with how we live, work, and play.

A couple of data points from the past month illustrate these trends.  For example, IMS Research just announced that cellular M2M connections are expected to more than triple from 2011 to 2016 to over 325 million.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see actual numbers significantly higher.  There are a dizzying number of cellular connected applications and devices from smart meters to connected vehicles, to smart parking meters, and many others.  When you add up all connected device types, Oracle says there are more than 9 billion devices connected to the Internet today and this will grow to 50 billion by 2020. 

Many more examples could be used, but the key takeaway is that where ever you look, M2M is well on its way…driven by both opportunity and necessity.

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Simplifying M2M

By Brian Vezza

Today Wind River is taking a significant step forward in simplifying machine-to-machine (M2M) development for our customers.  We announced the Wind River Intelligent Device Platform which builds upon Wind River’s operating system and tools leadership with M2M middleware to make it easier to design, build, and operate M2M or smart connected devices.

As I’ve written before, M2M devices require a range of capabilities including connectivity, manageability, and security among others.  The complexity and fragmentation in this space makes it much more difficult than it should be for the industry to reach its potential.  Designing products with a “do-it-yourself” (DIY) approach is tough and an M2M software platform makes a lot of sense.  After all, why recreate the wheel connecting, securing, and managing devices from scratch when you can make use of a software platform for these foundational capabilities and focus on your differentiators instead? 

Wind River Intelligent Device Platform starts with our embedded Linux and Workbench tool suite and adds on M2M middleware.  We’re making connectivity easier with a range of options including cellular, WiFi, ZigBee, and Ethernet among others.  Securing devices and data is now more powerful with Secure Remote Management (SRM).  Secure Remote Management works with hardware capabilities to enable a secure or trusted boot and a secure management connection.  If you aren’t 100% certain that you are managing the device you think you are talking to, that’s a real problem and SRM helps here.  Remote device manageability is a fragmented space with many different standards and a lot of DIY.  Wind River is working with best-in-class ecosystem partners to offer integrated and supported manageability middleware including OMA DM, TR-069, OSGi, and JVM.  Also, our platform is compatible with Intel’s newly introduced Intelligent Systems Framework.  This will help ensure M2M devices are fully integrated into broader Intelligent Systems from devices to data centers effectively.

It’s important to take the long-view with M2M as shortcuts today can cause numerous issues down the road with quality, longevity of the solution, support costs, operations issues, software updates, emerging standards, and supply chain complexity all being important.  M2M still is complex, but it’s getting a whole lot easier as Wind River continues our 30 plus years of working with customers on the toughest embedded challenges and opportunities.  I’ll be speaking about “Accelerating Machine-to-Machine Device Growth Through Embedded Software Development” at the Intel Developer Forum this week and will go into much more detail on these topics.  Together with our partners and customers we’re starting to crack the complexity of M2M, speed time-to-market, reduce total cost of ownership, and accelerate adoption.  We look forward to meeting with you at IDF and beyond to discuss this exciting space!

 

 

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An M2M Step in the Right Direction

By Brian Vezza

Today is an exciting day for companies looking to implement M2M-based devices and services, as well as for Wind River.  We have announced a collaboration with Digi International to deliver a new family of Digi-branded machine-to-machine (M2M) solutions that will enable us to significantly expand our M2M footprint.  Digi M2M Solution Builder kit will be based on Wind River software, Intel architecture and the iDigi Device Cloud.  Digi is a recognized leader in the M2M space and we are extremely pleased to be working with them.

I’ve written in past blog posts about “do-it-yourself” (DIY) M2M, the complexity involved, and hinted about a “better way.”  Today’s announcement is a big step in that direction.  Together, Digi, Wind River, and Intel are making it much easier for companies to cost effectively develop and deploy M2M-based (or “intelligent connected embedded”) solutions. 

By combining top hardware, connectivity, OS, middleware, cloud connectivity, and tools it is far easier to get up and running quickly, realize the benefits of M2M and reduce the ongoing operational complexity and expense over time compared to DIY.  The importance of this should not be underestimated.  It’s common to undervalue the M2M “software foundation” to both design and operate M2M devices and services in an effective manner, until it’s too late and becomes an issue that cannot be ignored. 

Leveraging the Wind River Embedded Development Kit for M2M Smart Services, the Digi M2M Solution Builder kit will include a Wind River Linux environment with an M2M software development kit, as well as Wind River Workbench.  It is suited for a wide variety of applications such as transportation, smart energy, building automation, access control, security/surveillance, m-health, kiosks, and fixed/mobile asset tracking/management. 

The Digi M2M Solution Builder kit will help companies monitor and control their systems from an end device to a gateway to Digi’s cloud services.  This speeds time-to-market while reducing complexity, risk and expenses.  With Wind River’s OS, tools, and “software foundation” for M2M combined with Digi’s cloud software, M2M-based cloud services are deployed quickly and managed efficiently over time. The seamless integration of cloud-connected services and applications is a natural extension of Wind River’s proven software and services for smart connected devices.

As I alluded to before, building and delivering an M2M solution involves combining technologies and capabilities, and the overall integration and testing of such a system -- and Wind River’s value proposition is built on streamlining and supporting the enablement of M2M services with our leading software and middleware, complemented by our extensive hardware and software M2M partner ecosystem.

The M2M market opportunity and our work with Intel, Digi and others have provided a significant opportunity for all partners involved. We look forward to continuing to expand our footprint in the M2M space and to working with Digi and others to make M2M more powerful and easy to use than ever before. 

Here’s to a big step forward in M2M and many more to come – we’ll keep you posted!

 

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Do-It-Yourself M2M Challenges

By Brian Vezza

Following up on my last blog post, I’d like to explore the concept of do-it-yourself (DIY) M2M. 

For companies just starting M2M projects, a DIY approach can look attractive.  This holds true for both companies building devices with M2M functionality and for those deploying devices and M2M services. But here’s the challenge, to borrow a quote, “you don’t know what you don’t know” -- meaning you don’t know all the pitfalls you may face. 

M2M sounds deceptively simple.   Take a device, connect it, and send data to another machine.  That can’t be too difficult, right?  We do this every day with our iPads, laptops, and cell phones. Unfortunately those are all “human” devices as opposed to embedded devices.  It took many years and focused efforts to make connecting to iTunes so easy.  The typical embedded device wasn’t designed to connect from day 1, and that’s where the challenges come into play. 

Okay, so connectivity is a challenge and I described this in detail in my last post.  But what else do we need to be concerned about? 

Often teams start with the hardware.  That may not be too difficult because design teams work with hardware all the time, although it can be tricky depending on the device and requirements.  Embedded software is somewhat obscure, but there are people who know this very well, so that can be handled without too many challenges with the right people and the right expertise.

Another point of concern is that connectivity leads to many other requirements and these are often underappreciated.  As soon as you connect an embedded device, a string of requirements come into play.  How will the device be managed?  The devices may be deployed far from the IT department or in hard to reach locations, so don’t plan on a truck roll to plug in and troubleshoot.  What protocols will be used?  Some M2M protocols are more common, but others are just emerging.  Sourcing components and then developing and integrating the software can be interesting.  Security is a must have.  What about the cloud, upgrades, etc.?  Will there be some mission-critical aspects which require additional reliability or performance?  Don’t forget about the second “M” as that’s important too.  You can’t have M2M without it!

Then there’s the whole reason you want M2M in the first place.  This varies, but is typically to either monitor or control an aspect of your operating environment.  This generates data that can be analyzed to provide “situational awareness” which will be applied to your specific situation.  Of course, you’ll probably want to do this at scale and add new devices over time.

All in all this leads to any number of pitfalls that can slow down your product or project, increasing risk and expenses, and reducing value.  DIY M2M requires a broad range of expertise.  Companies have expertise in many areas, but will almost always be missing a few areas and may not recognize it until deep into their project when it can be expensive to adjust.  As mentioned above, the DIY approach and challenges apply to both building products and operational concerns when implementing solutions.  These can be significant and I’ll continue to explore this in future posts.  There has to be a better way…

 

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Achieving Seamless Connectivity and Compliance for Mobile Healthcare

By Santhosh Nair

For the makers of medical devices used in mobile healthcare, connectivity is becoming increasingly critical.

Devices are becoming more intelligent and controlling more and more aspects of patient care, clinical diagnostics, and hospital administration. And they are interacting not just with people—expanding our ability to communicate and share information—but also with each other. They control systems that literally keep people alive. Machine-to-machine (M2M) interaction, delivered by ever-smaller, ever-smarter components, allows for new levels of “situational awareness” and analytics, revolutionizing medical practices.

Business realities are also driving the need for ever-greater connectivity in medical devices. Interoperable connectivity is important both for keeping costs in line and for ensuring compliance with safety and security standards and requirements. For example, to reduce costs and meet consumer demands, seamless connectivity via Bluetooth and wireless local area networks (WLANs) are often required. Cost is another important consideration: the use of open connectivity standards can reduce implementation and lifecycle costs. Connectivity also increases efficiency: IT integration with medical device functionality enables preventive monitoring and workflow optimization.

Equally important, connectivity impacts compliance. To meet medical industry safety standards and regulations, device manufacturers must find a way to tackle the increased security risks of the connected era. According to McAfee, more than 55,000 new malware programs are uncovered every day, aimed at attacking connected devices of every type and size. However, cyber security certification can only be ensured for a complete, integrated system, including applications.

In short, the complexity of connectivity is creating huge headaches for medical device manufacturers, and the problem is compounded by the rapid growth of the healthcare industry itself over the past decade. Today there are too many devices, made by too many companies, utilizing too many competing standards, deployed at too many hospitals and clinics, to tie it all together in any cohesive way.

The result is that all too often, several different manufacturers make similar devices using different standards, and these devices can’t communicate with each other. They can’t be connected. They can’t share data. They add cost and complexity. They end up reducing the quality of patient care rather than improving it.

Clearly, consolidation of standards is necessary in the medical device industry. Wind River is attempting to address the situation by making available a healthcare standards protocol—a basic, certified middleware stack that can be used by all device manufacturers to ensure their devices can communicate with all other devices built to the standard. In addition, we are expanding the use of other key industry standards within our platform so that our ecosystem of partners can simply take our stack and integrate it into their products with no issues. This will enable medical device manufacturers to select Wind River or Wind River ecosystem solutions and lower their barriers to entry.

Importance of the M2M Ecosystem

By Jens Wiegand

Today I participated in a great panel discussion with Intel, Kontron and Eurotech on the Peggy Smedley show.  The underlying theme of the discussion was around the importance of the M2M ecosystem and collaborating with partners.

Building device centric solutions combines four key vectors. The first is silicon, second is the hardware, third is the middleware and tools, and fourth the application design, testing and release of such as system. Under no circumstances could we create a compelling enabling solution when working in isolation.  Wind River, Intel, Kontron and Eurotech concluded that a strategic collaboration, which takes out the complexity between the hardware and the software, in the form of a verified and validated platform solution would address these concerns.  This collaboration has enabled us to further reduce time-to-market requirements and increase our value-added services by providing our customers a richer out-of-the-box experience with a compelling set of tools and operating system options – and allows our joint customers to focus their efforts and investments around key market/business initiatives.

What’s remarkable about it, is that we envisioned this back in 2009 as a very strategic investment for the parties to build that core foundation, allowing us to deliver comprehensive solutions such as the M2M Smart Services Developer Kit. The benefit for all four parties is providing a much better time to market experience, which results in better return on investment and faster monetization.

I’m very excited to be a part of this exciting time in the M2M space.  Wind River provides the software, tools, expertise and broad partner ecosystem to deliver this core functionality. In fact, in many respects, M2M communications falls squarely within our sweet spot of expertise.  After all, we do the extremely complex embedded work and do it well. Hardware optimization, connectivity, software security, adherence to industry standards and protocols, these are all core attributes of Wind River.

An interesting story that I shared during the panel discussion: our founder, Jerry Fiddler, once said, “The building of the Connected World, with hundreds of billions of connected smart devices … has hardly begun. It’s a spectacular opportunity, and Wind River will lead that world.”  What’s interesting is, he said that nearly a decade ago, so that gives you an indication of our foresight and focus in this area.

M2M: Smarter than Ever (But Still Misunderstood)

By Brian Vezza

Within the next few years, Machine-to-Machine (M2M) devices will account for more than half of all connected devices shipped annually. Think about that for a minute. There will be more M2M devices shipped each year than PCs, cell phones, tablets, set-top boxes, and gaming platforms put together. There are already hundreds of millions of M2M devices (if not over 1 billion) at work in sensors, smart meters, industrial control systems, SCADA devices, video surveillance, smart buildings … the list goes on. But ask 100 business executives to tell you what M2M is and you’ll get 100 very different answers. Ask those same executives what M2M means for their business, and those who follow the space will say that it will make their businesses smarter.

I can’t think of a technology that is so potentially transformational for business, and yet so poorly understood as M2M. It’s time to bring some clarity and focus to M2M so that businesses can transform the “promise” of M2M and smart solutions into real business results.

So I’ll start with a quick review of what M2M is and where it fits in the big picture of today’s technological landscape.

Making Sense of Data to Make Systems Smarter

To understand M2M you first have to grasp a key concept: The Internet is no longer a network of computers. It has evolved into a network of devices of all types and sizes, all connected, all communicating and sharing information all the time: cars, refrigerators, smart phones, toys, cameras, medical instruments, industrial systems, even trees embedded with sensors. 

In this “Internet of Things,” devices, systems, and machines don’t only communicate with humans; they also communicate with each other. And they can generate an enormous volume of data about all kinds of things: temperature, GPS position, speed, humidity, vibration, altitude, and so on.

This data can be used in all kinds of smart ways when it is collected, analyzed, and applied to products, systems, and services. In the medical arena, for example, M2M devices can provide heartbeat-to-heartbeat monitoring and give doctors the data they need to diagnose and treat people with chronic heart conditions. On the highways, M2M systems can provide dynamic traffic control to help prevent accidents and optimize traffic flow so that more people can reach their destinations sooner. On the factory floor, automation systems can use M2M data to more quickly and flexibly respond to changing tastes and preferences of consumers. 

Smarter Business Models via M2M Devices

In short, organizations of all types can take advantage of the intelligence generated by M2M to build smarter business models, create new sources of revenue and competitive advantage, and often reduce costs by improving productivity. And once more companies understand the transformative potential of M2M, the misunderstandings and misconceptions about M2M begin to disappear.

It’s easy to see why M2M has been hard to embrace. Intuitively we know about “human” devices because we see them, touch them, or use them. When the Xbox, Kindle, iPhone, or tablet computing device hits the streets (or even before), we almost always have some idea of what the device is and how we might use it. With M2M, our experience is much more limited. Unless you have worked with telematics, industrial controls, the smart grid, connected health monitoring devices, smart buildings, embedded computing, or related areas, it has been difficult to learn about M2M beyond the hype and the buzzwords.

However, broader acceptance and adoption of M2M is clearly underway. The growth of connected devices is skyrocketing, according to multiple analyst reports. Forecasts of 20 billion, 50 billion, or even 1 trillion connected devices by 2020 have been made by Ericsson, Cisco, IBM, McKinsey, and other leading companies. If the 50 billion connected device forecasts are accurate, then M2M could be over 50% of all connected devices shipped as soon as 2015. And according to McKinsey Quarterly June 2010, “More than two-thirds of new products feature some form of smart technology.” McKinsey estimates that at least $3 trillion in current spending could be impacted by M2M. 

The challenge for business leaders is that creating and/or implementing M2M with a do-it-yourself approach has been filled with potential pitfalls. Take something as seemingly straightforward as wireless connectivity. Should you use cellular, 802.11, 802.15.4, WiMAX, or satellite? If cellular, should you use 2G, 3G, or 4G? 2G may have wider coverage globally and lower costs, but will it be around for the life of your device or service? 4G has much higher bandwidth, but costs more. What coverage and technologies are supported by wireless service providers in your areas? You get the idea. With limited M2M rollouts this probably isn’t a huge issue, but at scale making poor choices now can cause huge issues operationally and financially. Making smarter choices can dramatically increase your value from M2M-based smart solutions.

Wind River is working to make it much easier for both device manufacturers and companies to adopt M2M. Last week at Intel’s Software Media Day and more recently at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF), I spoke about M2M and some of its challenges, and described a few of the areas Wind River is focusing on to accelerate the adoption of M2M along with our partners, such as the Wind River Embedded Development Kit for M2M Smart Services, which was designed in collaboration with Intel, Kontron, and Eurotech. This is a broad space with almost every vertical market making use of M2M at some level. One thing that is common to just about every M2M implementation is that building a solid foundation today will put you in better shape for years to come. 

In future blog postings I’ll explore some of these areas and how the many billions of smart connected devices, and specifically M2M, will need a common “kit” of capabilities.  Once this foundation is in place, it will be much easier to focus on extracting value created by M2M devices, turning that into knowledge, and then into action.

I’m looking forward to further exploring M2M and helping us all realize the immense potential of M2M and smart solutions.