1. Start
  2. Investors

Investors

M2MDB provides services for Internet of Things (IoT) and machine-to-machine (M2M) communications.

Even if we all can be amazed of the quick evolutions of computers, networking, and Internet, with email, world wide web, social networks, forecasts for Internet of Things is on a different - and sizable larger - scale.

Whereas it took almost 25 years (from nxoc01.cern.ch in 1990 to 2014) to reach 1 billion websites on the Internet, for IoT the projections varies between 25 and 50 billion connected devices by year 2020.

Cisco 2011 Fig 1

 

THE GLOBAL IOT MARKET OPPORTUNITY WILL REACH USD4.3 TRILLION BY 2024
21 April 2015 Machina Research predicts that the IoT market opportunity will be worth USD4.3 trillion in 2024. As M2M markets evolve and transform to IoT, these markets will include greater shares of traditional IT markets, ultimately subsuming them.

Machine 2015-04-21

IoT, IoE, ...

"The Internet of Things goes by many names. Cisco's preferred moniker is the Internet of Everything (IoE). Then there's the Internet of Better Things (Ikea), the Analytics of Everything (SAS), the Industrial Awakening (KPCB), the Industrial Internet (GE), Everyware (Adam Greenfield), Ubiquitous Computing, or UbiComp (Mark Weiser at PARC), Things That Think (Hiroshi Ishii of MIT) and Enchanted Objects (David Rose of MIT)." [ComputerWorld, May 2015]

For most people and organizations IoT is the more commonly used term (e.g. 20 million hits when used in search machine July 2015) and IoE (600 thousand hits) commonly viewed as a synonym.

Cisco: "Bradley said the key difference between the IoT and IoE is that the former is just an idea whereas the latter has a positive financial impact on the business." [Cisco Live 2015]

Along with a clear majority of the market, we are using Internet of Things (IoT) as prefered term.

Brief introduction to IoT

TechTarget:

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a scenario in which objects, animals or people are provided with unique identifiers and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction. [more]

Wikipedia:

The Internet of Things (IoT, sometimes Internet of Everything) is the network of physical objects or "things" embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and connectivity to enable objects to exchange data with the manufacturer, operator and/or other connected devices based on the infrastructure of International Telecommunication Union's Global Standards Initiative. [more]

Videos:

 

IoT vs. M2M...?

Whereas IoT is a rather broad and encompassing term, machine-to-machine (M2M) is about the technical aspects of exchanging data between different enteties - machines, and M2M can be viewed as a [critical] subset of IoT.

  IoT M2M
Devices: Things - goods, objects, machines, appliances, buildings, vehicles, animals, people, plants, soil... - more abstract term Machines, appliances, sensors, components - technical building blocks
Addressing: √ (things must be addressable) √ (devices must be addressable)
DataCom: √ (M2M technologies) √ (M2M technologies)
More: Behaviours - how people, animals, feels and behaves, how crops behaves, analytics, business processes, ... -
Summary: IoT refer to a rather wide scope of features and functions of components that are interacting with each other. M2M technologies is one critical part of IoT. M2M more specifically refer to the technologies involved in exchanging data between systems / components. M2M technologies has a much longer history than IoT and has already been in use in many different industries for decades. You can have M2M without IoT but you cannot have IoT without M2M.

 

Technology trends

Some resources for trends in general and how IoT and M2M are part of these.

Garner: Trends for 2015 (Oct 2014)

Gartner lays out its top 10 tech trends for 2015, Computerworld, 2014-10-07

# Trend M2M
1. Computing Everywhere. To Gartner, this simply means ubiquitous access to computing capabilities. Intelligent screens and connected devices will proliferate, and will take many forms, sizes and interaction styles. √
2. The Internet of Things (IoT). Clearley's advice to IT managers is to experiment, get ideas going and empower individuals in IT organizations to develop uses for connected devices and sensors. (#5 in trends for 2012) √
3. 3D Printing. The technology has been around since 1984, but is now maturing and shipments are on the rise. While consumer 3D printing gets a lot of attention, it's really the enterprise use that can deliver value. √
4. Analytics - Advanced, Pervasive and Invisible Analytics. Every application is an analytical app today. √
5. Context Rich Systems. Knowing the user, the location, what they have done in the past, their preferences, social connections and other attributes all become inputs into applications. √
6. Smart Machines. As an example, Cearley pointed to global mining company Rio Tinto which operates autonomous trucks, to show the role smart machines will play. √
7. Cloud and Client Computing. This highlights the central role of the cloud. An application will reside in a cloud, and it will be able to span multiple clients. √
8. Software Defined Applications and Infrastructure. IT can't work on hard coded, pre-defined elements; it needs to be able to dynamically assemble infrastructure, said Cearley. √
9. Web-Scale IT. This is akin to adopting some of the models used by large cloud providers, including their risk-embracing culture and collaborative alignments. √
10. Security. In particular, Gartner envisions more attention to application self-protection. √

 

Garner: Hype graphic (Aug 2014)

Gartner's 2014 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies Maps the Journey to Digital Business, Gartner, 2014-08-11

Internet of Things - just at the top of Peak of Inflated Expectations

Machine-to-Machine Communication Services - note that this refer to services, not M2M [technologies] themselves, which are more in Slope of Enlightenment.

NFC (Near-Field Communications) is definitely entering Slope of Enlightenment, with all payment services that increasingly are depending on NFC technologies.

Connected Home - note it's position early in Innovation Trigger phase, and for good reasons - way too many different, and incompatible, technologies in the market that needs consolidations.

Consumer telematics are end-user-targeted vehicle-centric information and communication technologies (vehicle ICTs) and services. Network-enabled cars for consumers provide in-vehicle services, such as emergency assistance, Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation, traffic information, local search (for example, for charging stations or restaurants) and concierge services. [gartner]

Garner: Trends for 2012 (Oct 2011)

Gartner: The top 10 strategic technology trends for 2012, Computerworld, 2011-10-18

  1. Media tablets and beyond: Bring-your-own-technology at work has become the norm, not the exception.
  2. Mobile-centric applications and interfaces: Here touch, gesture and voice search is going to change the way mobile apps work in the future
  3. Social and contextual user experience
  4. Application stores and marketplace
  5. The Internet of everything: The idea here is that we are building on pervasive computing where cameras, sensors, microphones, image recognition -- everything -- is now part of the environment. Remote sensing of everything from electricity to air conditioning use is now part of the network. In addition, increasingly intelligent devices create issues such as privacy concerns. Eventually IT will need some central unified management of all these devices, Cearley says.
  6. Next-generation analytics
  7. Big data
  8. In-memory computing
  9. Extreme low-energy servers
  10. Cloud computing