Technology

New Group to Make Business Case for M2M

Technological advances are making it possible for machines to communicate with one another, and now a trade group has been established to help standardize the industry.

Imagine a world in which your car can communicate with computer a thousand miles away and give you periodic status updates, warn you if your tire pressure is getting too low, or let you know that it’s time for a tune-up.

We must show companies that are interested M2M deployments … that there is a provable ROI for communications between devices.

With constantly advancing technology, those days are, in a way, already here. And now there’s a group to help manage the field of machine-to-machine communications (M2M) and help companies across various industries prepare to bring their products up to speed.

The International M2M Council (IMC) officially launched at the CTIA Wireless show this week in Las Vegas, and the group already includes several influential connectivity providers, software developers, and component makers and integrators.

“As the M2M industry enters a new phase of broad-based growth and increasing complexity, now’s the time for leadership companies in the M2M community to create a forum where they can share lessons learned, best practices, and ideas for future growth,” Patrick Shay, executive vice president of sales and marketing at ORBCOMM, Inc., said in a statement. “The International M2M Council will serve as a voice for our rapidly growing industry … and promote best practices internationally.” ORBCOMM is a charter IMC board member.

IMC said it hopes to prove the business case for M2M by showing that the basic technology already exists and that connectivity is creating new revenue possibilities, cutting costs, and easing regulatory compliance.

“We must show companies that are interested M2M deployments … that there is a provable ROI for communications between devices,” Juergen Hase, vice president of the M2M Competence Center for Deutsche Telekom, said in a statement.

The group will begin work on an “Adopter Benchmark Index” in the coming months, which will track financial and management performance for companies committed to M2M projects (consisting mainly of IMC founding members right now). The goal of the index is “to provide companies deploying M2M with crucial data points that reduce risk and ease planning.”

IMC intends to release the results in the first quarter of 2014.

Rob Stott

By Rob Stott

Rob Stott is a contributing editor for Associations Now. MORE

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