 | Issue: | Europe II 2013 |
| Article no.: | 3 | |
| Topic: | Vision with imprecision – Things and stuff | |
| Author: | Ian J Orrock | |
| Title: | Chairman & CEO | |
| Organisation: | Arkessa | |
| PDF size: | 194KB |
About author
Ian J Orrock is the Chairman and CEO of Arkessa; his career has been devoted to building technology and TMT (Technology, Media and Telecommunications) businesses. Mr Orrock started in missile dynamics software engineering, but quickly moved into selling IBM data services and long distance communications. Mr Orrock then founded CRL, a software and bureau business, later sold to United Telecom; he ‘scaled’ Redac into CAE; bought and built Serck and Horstmann Controls in SCADA and metering; built and sold Vianet and co-founded Arkessa for M2M. Mr Orrock just sold the Imano mobile app business to Ness. Mr Orrock chairs Yo.tv / TVGuide.co.uk.
Ian J Orrock, a business graduate, has worked in the US twice and built businesses in Japan, China and most European markets.
Article abstract
The Internet of things (IoT), spoken about for years, but timidly implemented, seems, at last, to be taking off. By 2020, analysts expect 65 billion I0T-connected devices, more and better apps than we can imagine today, and a standardised technological eco-system that will let enterprises, organisations and individuals interconnect remotely with the devices that simplify their work, watch their health, provide security and much more. Some believe that the IoT revolution will be as profound as the Internet revolution itself.
Full Article
At last M2M (machine-to-machine) and the IoT (Internet of Things) are upon us, adding a new industrial dimension. Billions of ‘things’ are communicating with each other ceaselessly and communicating lots of ‘stuff’ using all available means of connectivity and device.
We now have secure data connectivity with intelligence at the end points, addressing the interests of commerce, industry, government and consumers – with potentially limitless scale, infinite variety and with easy access and control.
We might now be at a market tipping point – I certainly think so. Some of us have been waiting over 20 years for the cost of devices, communications and implementation to fall, as supply-side scaling kicks in, and for cost reductions to escalate benefits and improve user payback and other demand-side drivers. As costs become more reasonable, M2M / IoT delivery is likely to become a critical means of reducing the total cost of delivery. Easily deployed, M2M adds value to industry and government services by improving efficiency and control. M2M will also play significant roles helping the environment and improving healthcare.
Not since the printing press, the steam engine, the integrated circuit or the Internet has there been such a pervasive industrial and commercial opportunity capable of contributing to the greater benefit of mankind.
Background
The market has been addressing parts of the M2M market for some time. Today, though, several factors conspire to promote the advance of M2M – the devices are more powerful and faster, batteries last longer, mobile network data tariffs have fallen sharply and become commoditized and user apps proliferate in every area from animal husbandry, to monitoring an incredible variety of equipment. M2M is now able to offer a bewildering spectrum of commercial services.
Some of the applications, talked of as new uses of connectivity, were in full, satisfactory, use 50 years ago. The public utilities, train lines, oil and gas sectors paved the way. Sure the equipment was clunky and horrendously expensive – you could easily lose £20m on a SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) implementation or £500k on a simple BMS (building management system) system with specialized boxes, bespoke software and a range of communication media. It had to be mission critical or generate major payback to get funded and implemented, but these systems were successfully installed all over the world. Some of us have been waiting years for the technologies and supply economics to arrive and make economic M2M scaling possible and practical enough to widen into the IoT.
M2M / IoT is one of the hottest propositions ever seen, but there is still no way to pick the future leaders. Will it be today’s network and systems heavyweights, the device incumbents – or might it be an entrant from left field that ‘gets it’ and isn’t constrained by a particular technology focus, the market, the inertia of its origins, or the legacy of its brand.
Current scenario
How often have you encountered such a fertile Technology, Media and Telecoms landscape? Some of you you may recall the beginning of commercial computing and the very slow long-distance data-communications in the sixties; the move to DOS (disk operating systems), random access and databases in the seventies; the advent of the PC and Microsoft in the eighties; the explosion of personal mobile communications in the nineties; and the ubiquitous Internet and ease of consumer connectivity in the first decade of this millennium?
Maybe it is the hour, for M2M / IoT; I think it can readily outstrip all prior growth stories. I see it as the combination of all of the above – but with a unique 21st century turn. It’s global, for sure, but the market drivers across the world and user attitudes are notably different. It has the capacity to unobtrusively pervade society as well as industry and commerce.
We, the technologists, will create homogeneous service offerings and make them work, despite the great variety of device types and standards for almost every – data transport, database standards, device protocols, cloud hosted or not and more – aspect of M2M. Then too, every implementation has its own unique characteristics and usage profile. To complicate the situation even more, there are a great number of specific applications – each serviced by its own eco-system.
In this scenario, the 65 billion connections projected by 2020 will be dwarfed by the number and frequency of connections made. There will be lots of things talking to each other – servicing and connecting all kinds of stuff throughout the world, taking input from anywhere and everywhere that’s relevant to the users’ needs or the applications’ requirements.
Smart or not so smart
Defining the elements M2M / IoT is difficult. M2M embraces almost any machine or sensor you can think of – and so it should. The challenge is to do this within real-world settings. Some major players have implemented significant pilots, but they may have missed the key ingredient, which is servicing a diversity of users. The approach adopted by utilities – to monitor, manage and control – although necessary, is only part of the picture. The model is too inflexible and stifling to deal adequately with the diverse needs of, say, a city, its communities, businesses, indeed, of its society as a whole.
Devices need to be added, pooled or removed without reference to some managed scheme. Once information becomes available it needs to become truly available to all and there is no telling or controlling what the user will do with it. This brings many challenges, but it characterises the critical choice – do we want a controlled IoT or a diverse, user-led community?
The corporate situation
Because you’re big and established does not mean you’re best. It almost certainly means that you have financial muscle, but that usually comes with corporate inertia and self-preserving layers of management. It is not easy then, to be fast moving and market responsive. It is not easy to have all the right products marketed in most appropriate manner to capture this market. It is just as easy to get it wrong and fall out of favour.
In M&A (mergers and acquisitions) we’ve seen a major US loss making player in the M2M space sell for more than six times their annual sales, and small specialists are being swallowed up by major suppliers as they fill gaps in their evolving M2M portfolio or seek to create an offering in IoT.
The first stage movers are the SME (small, medium enterprise) outfits with the insight and fleetness of foot to help create the market, identify and address users’ needs, and implement solutions and systems that will build scale for the market.
The successful second stage movers are increasingly the major corporations who either understand the needs of the market well – or will acquire the best in class SMEs that do – and roll out an aggressive strategy to tackle the wider market by expanding the existing base of customers who trust them.
This is where we are at the moment. The corporate world and their advisors and the private equity players have done their research and are now trawling the M2M / IoT space to find opportunities to fulfil their plans and generate growth of a hugely rewarding nature.
Who will become the leading, third stage movers, and achieve a meaningful share of the M2M / IoT industrial scaling and potential global dominance – in the manner of Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook currently, and IBM, GE and GM in the past? Who knows, the door is open to new players as much as it is to the incumbents.
Vision
So how do we see this unfolding scenario? Perhaps Anne Mulcahy who orchestrated a dramatic turn round within the Xerox Corporation said it best. She described the need to communicate the “vision with imprecision” to help delegate to and empower management in a fast changing and challenging environment. Establishing the future for M2M / IoT is a much greater challenge than that which Anne encountered, but her view is entirely appropriate for its development.
Today, companies are developing key enablement technologies and strategies so that others can bring their vision of M2M / IoT and a remotely connected world to fruition. Organizations with any product, service or business model can now connect their own or their customers’ ‘things’, to relevant, external ‘stuff’, uniquely portraying their offering in the Internet of Things. An anarchic and challenging “vision with imprecision”, that not everyone will grasp or be able to implement.
