M2M : Machine 2 Machine

Came across this article that points out the current state of wireless M2M implementations. It provides insight into the challenging environment in which adopters of M2M systems have to work.

Here is a snippet

It’s almost a cliché to say that everything is going wireless. And I suppose that’s true enough if you’re talking about person-to-person communication—or applications that are in the direct service of human beings such as wireless PC peripherals and hands-free headsets and entertainment systems.

True machine-to-machine (M2M) communication, on the other hand, is still in its infancy. It’s been there, crawling around in diapers more or less, for quite some time.

The basic technologies are available. The problem seems to lie in the value proposition for companies that want to implement a wireless system.

The wireless module is probably the easiest part—just drop it into the system, box, or vehicle. But then comes the hard part. How do you develop the application? How do you upgrade and maintain the hardware and the application? How do you get information from the end point—let’s say it’s a vending machine that is out of Diet Coke—onto the transport network and into a database? How do you act on the vending machine’s request in a cost-efficient fashion?

Truth be known, that takes a lot of expertise from maybe a half-dozen knowledge domains. Clearly, a job for a system integrator—as long as you have multiple millions of dollars to invest.