Act II: Applications that See and Hear

If you follow the blogs, tweets and news in this industry, you may have noticed a recent thread of discussions about the nomenclature we use to describe what we do. For most of the past 10 years, this market has been called “Machine-to-Machine” or M2M for short. Lately the phrase ‘Internet of Things’ has emerged as a trendy and appropriate twist on that theme. It plays on the idea that at some point, likely during our lifetimes, there will be 50 billion connected things.

One of the leading providers of technology in our space is Telit. I love their tagline, “We Make Machines Talk” – so simple and so clear. There are many companies that similarly provide a voice to the voiceless machine. Beyond module, modem and device vendors, the wireless operators – MNOs and MVNOs – have also jumped on the bandwagon to provide the essential transport mechanism for the machine’s voice. Numbers vary, but there is little doubt that there are more 500 million devices connected and communicating on wireless networks globally today.

The reason that executives and pundits are scratching their heads about what to call this market is because the terms we’re using only define a part of the opportunity we’re addressing and only a subset of the challenges that our customers face. In other words it’s an important part of the story, but only the first part, or Act 1.

Talking machines and global networks are only meaningful if there are applications to hear and see what machines are saying and doing. That’s where SensorLogic enters the picture. Our platform puts the ‘sensor logic’ in applications. In other words, while our friends in the industry connect machines to machines, we’re connecting machines to applications – and creating business intelligence that is ultimately useful to people. We are the eyes, ears and even some of the logic of our customers’ applications.

Enabling development and deployment of these connected applications presents a set of challenges as unique as those that customers face when connecting machines. These applications are heterogeneous, global and dynamic. They also must be abstracted from underlying networks and machines. Otherwise they become inflexible silos of functionality that cannot adapt to the changing needs of their own users.

That said, for all their differences, these connected applications also have many things in common with each other. Connected applications all want to see, hear and know what’s going on with things or assets. These capabilities aren’t usually the customer-facing, differentiated intellectual property that sets applications apart. Instead, they can be embodied in a common application-enablement platform that provides the common capabilities that developers of connected applications need to get to market fast. Just as voices, eyes and ears are merely parts of the whole, so too, devices and networks are only part of the applications that rely on them.

That brings me back to the present identity question in our industry segment. M2M, it now seems clear, is better thought of as a means to an end. That ‘end’ – the much bigger payoff we can all envision – centers on a world full of connected applications and the incredibly powerful business services they can deliver to customers.

Please feel free to share your thoughts on how Act II of the M2M story will play out. We look forward to the dialogue.

Michael J. Campbell, CEO

CTIA San Diego – Recap

The CTIA Enterprise & Applications show last week was a bit of a blur – as these shows always are when you exhibit. With the dust now settled, we thought we’d share some thoughts and observations about the event.

In the keynote rooms, it was, as expected, the big operators putting forth their take on the latest wireless trends and technologies. But there also were compelling talks about what’s happening on the enterprise side from companies like OnStar and American Express.

To get the real pulse of the event, however, you had to go to the exhibit floor, and more specifically the M2M Zone. M2M was the hottest topic of conversation among attendees, so it’s no surprise that the M2M Zone was the busiest section of the show floor.

Hundreds of visitors came our booth to check out the latest version of the SensorLogic Service Delivery Platform. There was also lots of activity in other booths, including AT&T, Cinterion, Kore Telematics and MultiTech.

The general consensus among booth staffers was that prospective customers were not just curious about M2M but are actually moving ahead with projects. The talk was about finding the right companies to partner with and the right technologies for connecting their businesses, applications and people to the real-world items – assets, meters, trucks, packages, whatever – that are most relevant and critical to their success.

With only a week passed by since the CTIA show closed, SensorLogic has already engaged with several companies we met with there. We’re helping these teams to move quickly to achieve their connected application goals.

Everything Everywhere

It was exciting to read the news about Everything Everywhere’s new M2M platform. Everything Everywhere is the T-Mobile/Orange joint venture that covers more than 28 million wireless subscribers in the UK.

http://everythingeverywhere.com/2011/09/29/everything-everywhere-launches-m2m-management-platform/

They are the latest operator to jump into the M2M fray with their own dedicated platform. These homegrown and third party M2M platforms will simplify the management of SIMs and network connectivity for the thousands, millions and billions of devices that will soon be running on wireless networks around the world.

M2M service offerings from MNOs, MNEs and MVNEs are table stakes for those who want to be players in the exploding Internet of Things market. But it’s really just the first layer; there’s much more that needs to be done in terms of application enablement, systems integration and support.

It’s a great step though from a respected market leader. This is a sign of the M2M market’s growing momentum.

CEO Corner – Embracing the Cloud

The tremendous growth in the M2M market is driving unprecedented activity here at SensorLogic, and we thought it was time to share some of this with our friends and colleagues. Beyond bundling updates and current events at the company, I want to explain how we are delivering value to our customers and helping to transform a market.

When I joined the company two years ago, the value of both M2M and the ‘Internet of Things’ remained more of a dream than a reality. It was clear that cost, complexity and time to market were significant impediments to M2M’s pervasive adoption. People even had a hard time defining what an M2M application was, but they knew one when they saw it.

Borrowing a phrase from the well-known Staples ad, we knew that M2M needed an “Easy Button”, or perhaps just an “Easier Button”. During my first few months on the job, I met with professionals from enterprise IT departments, systems integrators and other application developers who built connected applications in a wide range of markets. What I learned was fascinating and telling.

All of them had built a 1.0 application, and all agreed that it took too long and cost too much money. Universally though, their biggest source of pain was managing these applications as changes in various layers of the solution occurred. Some customers had difficulties dealing with hardware or device management. For others it was handling the network layer, and still for others it was improving the application’s basic feature set or UI. Every one of these customers and prospects had boxed themselves in because their applications had mashed features and device connections into one single code base or framework.

I also realized that our customers often didn’t think of themselves as building M2M applications per se, but rather they were enabling other applications with M2M capabilities. This insight proved to be critical as we re-shaped our new platform and business model.

In late 2009 we took our platform apart, piece by piece, and transformed what was an M2M application framework into a set of discrete, distributed services and put these in the cloud as a Platform as a Service. Today, our customers build applications for systems monitoring, security, supply chain, telematics, building automation, smart metering, etc. They leverage our platform to M2M-enable these applications, whether they were pre-existing or brand new services.

Nobody else in the market takes this approach today, which affords our customers absolute flexibility, extensibility and scale. It is truly the ultimate marriage of services oriented architecture and cloud computing.

So as you read the latest news and updates from SensorLogic, you won’t read about out-of-the-box, ready-made M2M applications but rather how today’s most innovative companies, integrators and developers are leveraging the power of cloud-based service enablement. The SensorLogic platform and business model was designed to let our customers focus on the parts of their business that they know best while relying on us to provide ‘sensor logic’ to their core applications.

It has never been more exciting to be a part of SensorLogic and I’m personally delighted to have you among our growing list of customers, partners and friends.

Michael J. Campbell
President and CEO

For Developers – Did you know that…

A variety of device types (wireless, wired, etc.) can report events, status reports and exceptions in a variety of protocols to the SensorLogic Service Delivery Platform.

The SensorLogic Platform processes these complex events, correlates them temporally and/or spatially, and relays them to upstream applications based on specified business rules.

In addition to supporting device communications, the SensorLogic Platform enables applications, monitoring gateways and concentrators to communicate various state information to the Platform. Using the ‘Generate Event’ API, such a monitored element could send a string of pairs to the SensorLogic Platform and trigger follow up action. The follow up action could then take the form of alerts/notifications to upstream applications/users or of calling another web service.

For example, HVAC units could send ambient temperature and CO2 emissions information as pairs to the Platform. Based on certain thresholds, the Platform can then be instructed to trigger an SMS notification to the maintenance staff or call a web service to trigger an alternate workflow. This capability is agnostic to the industry vertical or application that the Platform is serving. The same approach can be used in Retail, mHealth or Industrial Controls.

New Route Service & Geofences

 

The SensorLogic Service Delivery Platform supports multiple types of geofences and geofence alerts out of the box. Polygonal and radial geofences, which are supported by the Platform, are quite common in the industry. SensorLogic adds the Route service and Route geofence capabilities, which are especially relevant in the Asset Tracking and Monitoring verticals.

 

The SensorLogic Platform interfaces with an industry-leading routing software to obtain optimal routes between two physical locations. The Platform’s Route service enables an application to define an origin and a destination and obtain the optimal route between those two points. It also enables the application to specify compliance constraints such as ‘hazmat’ routes, driver breaks and hours-of-operation. The application can then designate the route as a geofence on the platform and track assets/shipments taking that route. The application will be able to set limits around the route geofence and set alerts for when the asset/shipment breaches those limits. For instance, these geofence alerts could be used to monitor assets/shipments in a continuous fashion as opposed to reactive management at the destination.

 

The SensorLogic Platform’s capabilities can also be used to set the origin or destination as a polygonal/radial geofence and receive automatic alerts when the asset/shipment crosses the geofence. These Platform capabilities, in addition to the productivity enhancement and cost savings from optimal trip planning, make the SensorLogic Platform an ideal fit for assets and shipment tracking.

A Few Words About Location Services in the SensorLogic Platform

Most M2M devices used in applications developed with the SensorLogic Service Delivery Platform are equipped with GPS chipsets and periodically report their location coordinates to the Platform. The SensorLogic Platform can also enable Assisted GPS (AGPS) location determination with the aid of the mobile operator if the devices being used have that capability.

 

It is well known that location determination with GPS can be challenging in some radio environments, such as urban canyons and indoor locations. Under those challenging conditions, M2M devices report cell tower information of the serving cellular base station. The SensorLogic Platform can then provide coarse location estimates using its international Cell ID database.

 

Lately, there has been an industry-wide push to employ general-purpose enterprise devices for M2M applications. Most of these enterprise devices are Wi-Fi capable. SensorLogic, working with a partner, can also support location determination using Wi-Fi signals.

 

Precise location determination can both be expensive and time-consuming. There will be M2M applications that may not require precise location information.  Coarse lat/lon information will suffice in those cases. There may be other applications where rapid location determination on demand is critically important.

 

The SensorLogic Platform keeps track of this complementary nature of application needs and device capabilities. Based on an organization’s needs, prevailing radio conditions and device capabilities, the SensorLogic Platform can pick the optimal location determination method from a menu of options. For instance, if the organizational preference is for a quick and least-expensive, coarse location estimate, the Platform will not issue an AGPS locate request even though the device may be capable of supporting it. If the organizational preference is for the most accurate estimate, the Platform accords primacy to GPS and AGPS over other methods. Any location determination method supported on the platform can be assigned as the organization’s “first-choice” or a “fallback” location determination method.

In the Cloud – It’s becoming clearer for Telcos

We’re a Cloud Computing pioneer that happens to spend a lot of time with Service Providers and Telcos. Even casual observers can see how these titans are managing the transition of our connected world and their revenue, from wired to wireless. Even as they struggle with wireless quality issues – coverage and reliability – businesses and consumers enthusiastically embrace the shift.  This market shift is clearly reflected within operators’ balance sheets and executive offices as power shifts from one side of the business to the other.

But not so fast.

For some time now, it seemed that the wireline arms of Verizon, Vodafone, NTT and others were losing the battle to their wireless brethren.  More recently with Telcos, however, there is clear evidence of a strategy to once again own and monetize the underlying infrastructure that supports the connected and even the virtual worlds. If consumer and machine wireless connectivity was one of the great innovations of the last decade, the Cloud will be the driver in the next. Verizon’s recent acquisitions Terremark and now CloudSwitch make it clear that the Operators can be the leading providers of infrastructure for the next generation of Cloud-based infrastructure, platforms and applications.

We recently engaged with a global Fortune 500 customer that wants to drive their business into the cloud as a new managed service. We asked about their operator of choice in the United States. The answer was Verizon.  When we asked if Verizon was their legacy wireless provider, their answer was a surprising “no”. The reason they wanted to make the move was that company’s perceived leadership in Cloud Computing. Verizon’s Cloud initiatives and focus have built this reputation, and their recent acquisitions are solidifying it.

NTT and others have made similar acquisitions in the past couple of years. These are brilliant moves on the chessboard. They underscore the fact that major Telcos recognize which communications infrastructure elements matter most in a Cloud-driven world. But these moves also are a way of appealing to the enterprise market – something operators have typically done poorly. As wired and wireless data services are increasingly commoditized, value added services and infrastructure will become valued more and more highly in the future.

I guess things can actually be clearer in the Cloud after all.

Michael Campbell, CEO

Saab and SensorLogic – For left-lane drivers

I only saw it once but it left a big impression on me as I crawled through rush hour traffic in Boston earlier this year. It was a billboard for Saab that said “For left lane drivers…And right brain thinkers”. The ad campaign from Saab speaks volumes about what SensorLogic and others are doing to drastically alter the way businesses approach building applications that involve connected and networked “things”.  It’s all about acceleration and speed (left lane)…while maintaining control (right brain).

At SensorLogic, we’re working with dozens of companies that are innovating in very exciting ways, delivering new cloud-based products and services in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost of other approaches. One such customer explained that they were going to kill a project until they found our Service Delivery Platform for M2M applications. Just like the new Saab 9-3 can go from zero to 60 in just over 60 seconds, we have customers that have gone from no product to new product in a short number of weeks in a well-managed process.

Building, integrating and managing applications for the cloud is not free and it still requires some ‘driving’. But it’s a heck of a lot faster and more fun when you can do it from the left lane. That’s what our customers and a large part of this market are finally realizing.

Enjoy the ride.

Michael Campbell, CEO