Seybold's take: M2M services need compelling applications too

Machine-to-machine (M2M) communications are getting a boost with AT&T Mobility and Jasper Wireless announcing they will be pushing the M2M business, and Verizon Wireless and Qualcomm forming a joint venture that will focus on the M2M market. Aeris is the current world leader in M2M and has been in the business of providing wireless machine-to-machine communications for many years, and some of you may remember a satellite company called Orbcomm that provided global M2M communications.

M2M has been around for a long time, so why all the renewed interest? First and foremost, there are more machines in the world than there are people, and many of them need to be able to "talk" to other machines or a central reporting point to share data and receive instructions--perhaps open a value when a certain level is reached in a tank, release chlorine into a hotel pool when the level drops below a certain point, send an alert that something is not working properly, and--the typical demo example--send a message from a soda machine that says, "Come fill me up, I am low on Diet Coke."

Perhaps the biggest stumbling block for the adoption of M2M communications has been a lack of cooperation from network operators. Most of them follow a formula that tells them it will cost around $25, give or take, to support a customer on their network. So when a sales person brings in an M2M deal that will generate less than $5 per month per device (because the data usage is so low), the accounting types look at the deal as a business loss, not new business. Only recently have they come to understand that machines sitting on their networks sending only small amounts of data every once in a while, generating between $2 and $5 per month, represent a pretty good business model.

This brings me to the point of this article: Machines cannot talk to other machines or to a central facility unless there are applications embedded or resident on them to enable them to communicate and use the information that is available to them. A machine does not read a value unless software tells it to, and an alarm is not sent unless software has been written to instruct the machine that it needs to send an alarm under certain conditions. These generic examples make M2M communications sound simple, but the bottom line is that some of the M2M business is fairly sophisticated.

For example, some M2M applications monitor trucks and buses and provide information about their location, engine temperatures, gas consumption, speed and many other statistics. The vehicles and thus their valuable cargos can be tracked, and it is possible to learn that a vehicle needs service before the driver realizes it. Some of the systems even count passengers getting on and off buses to help the route dispatchers determine whether more buses are needed on a route and how much money the bus drivers have collected.

It is not possible to list all of the different types of M2M applications because no one person can know about all of them. Most have to do with vertical markets, but there are crossover applications from one vertical to another. M2M applications are important. They won't be million-dollar sellers on the Apple App Store, but then again, M2M apps aren't usually sold for 99 cents a copy, either.

How do you find out how you can be involved? Talk to Jasper, AT&T, Verizon, Qualcomm, Aeris, and/or industries that need M2M communications and can detail exactly what they need. One of the great things about this market is that for the most part you will be dealing with wireless modules without screens on one end and visual displays in a command-and-control center on the other end. And in many cases, even in different vertical markets, the same modules are used, so you don't have to modify your applications as much.

This market is not for developers who want to write software that lands on the top ten list in an app store or who want recognition beyond what goes into their wallet. It is a nameless, faceless market that can provide a steady stream of income for those who develop the right types of applications and for those who take the time to find out what is needed or what is already out there that is old and stale and needs to be reborn as a current-day application.

Your software will have to be bulletproof--it cannot fail when it is told to open a valve in the middle of nowhere and then to close it again. If your application hangs up with the valve open, it could cost a company a lot of money.

I have not even touched on home and business uses for M2M such as light control, heater and air conditioner control or opening/closing garage doors, or any of the applications that will be needed for our next-generation, personal-area networks such as ZigBee and Wireless USB 2.0. However, in the wide-area market alone, there are a huge number machines out there. Unless the wireless connections are smart, it makes no difference if they are connected to a network--and there are many opportunities to make them smart.

Andrew Seybold is an authority on technology and trends shaping the world of wireless mobility. A respected analyst, consultant, commentator, author and active participant in industry trade organizations, his views have influenced strategies and shaped initiatives for telecom, mobile computing and wireless industry leaders worldwide. www.andrewseybold.com