Over the past 12 years, machine-to-machine (M2M) technology has evolved from an emerging market focused on “blue collar” applications like fleet tracking to a large, technology-driven market that delivers new products and services reaching into almost every aspect of our day-to-day lives.

While the connected consumer has become commonplace, organizations around the world are taking advantage of wide-ranging M2M wireless networks that connect millions of embedded devices in electric utility meters, vehicles, security systems, and consumer products, to name a few applications. M2M solutions are becoming increasingly mainstream as organizations recognize that network connectivity can improve their product and service delivery.

Service providers have built out highly reliable wireless IP networks with essentially ubiquitous reach, supporting a wide variety of applications. These networks are tuned to reliably and efficiently transmit data from embedded wireless devices, which have become far less costly. In addition, M2M connectivity services now enable data to be transmitted relatively inexpensively. These factors together have moved the M2M market to a tipping point for widespread adoption.

With the broad deployment of 3G networks and the promise of 4G on the horizon, M2M is now poised to permanently impact the future of how organizations conduct business on a global scale. According to Beecham Research, the market is projected to grow to more than $250 billion by the end of 2012. In a recent international Beecham survey, M2M adopters viewed M2M-enabled solutions as an essential way for global organizations to remain competitive and create new service opportunities.

Lots of Applications

M2M enables a wide variety of vertical applications, such as environmental monitoring, fleet and fuel management, valuable asset tracking, utility smart grids and meter reading/control, law enforcement tracking and surveillance, and building energy management and security. Serving these market segments requires thoughtful integration of the applications, devices, and M2M network service, all packaged together to solve a specific problem.

Growing M2M adoption across many vertical markets, each of which demands specialized approaches, has created new revenue opportunities for solution providers, who in turn partner with network providers to help organizations reduce real business costs and drive profitable growth. As the adoption of M2M services increases, organizations are looking for ways to expand their deployments globally. Large, enterprise-class customers want to install the same M2M applications in multiple national marketplaces without compromising time-to-market, cost effectiveness, or customer satisfaction.

For instance, a manufacturer might want to build M2M capability into its equipment to serve customer needs in the U.K., Ireland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the U.S. To make its business model work, the manufacturer needs a solution set with M2M devices and networking services with a predictable cost profile in all geographies.

Critical Global Connectivity

Reliability and connectivity are key enablers in the push to deliver such seamless M2M capability across geographies. But accessing overseas markets, distant from the domestic market of the manufacturer in our example, has required either the use of roaming-based services—with long-term serviceability and tariff considerations—or individual negotiations with multiple local service providers, each with varying commercial terms, commitments, service levels, and points of contact. In the first scenario, the service may be too expensive and unpredictable. In the second, it may be too complicated.

Recently, the M2M landscape changed with the announcement of the m2mGlobal Alliance, a group of M2M wireless network operators that provide unified network services for support of M2M applications. The first organization of its kind, the m2mGlobal Alliance provides essentially transparent delivery of GSM-based M2M connectivity internationally, enabling solution providers to reliably and cost-effectively offer M2M-enabled applications in their targeted markets.

With the m2mGlobal Alliance, M2M application providers can ensure their solutions will be enabled by the availability of reliable, predictable wireless network coverage around the world, easily contracted, and with a single, local point of contact.

By working with one local M2M network provider instead of multiple regional providers, companies have a single point of contact, network interface, common service level, and invoicing for the delivery of their networked applications. This drastically simplifies the multinational expansion process for M2M-enabled solutions and helps companies address their customers’ needs far more efficiently, as well as enhance their competitive advantage.

The trend toward global deployments of M2M applications will continue to accelerate, as efficiency improvements and cost savings drive technology adoption. The partnerships among makers of embedded devices, solutions providers, and M2M network operators have evolved into a truly global ecosystem.

Alex Brisbourne is president and COO of KORE Telematics. He has more than 20 years of experience in leading wireless, enterprise, and fixed-line service companies and sits on the advisory board of several technology companies in the United States and Canada.

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