The Big Picture of today's M2M landscape

Mastering the Musts

Let’s briefly (promise!) go back to the basics. Please!

The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the hottest buzzwords in todays technology industry. The term IoT sells very well these days, mainly because of all the predictions for IoT to become a multi-trillion dollar industry. These predictions are made by many acclaimed organizations, for example, IDC, Forbes, Oracle, Cisco, just to name a few.  Most claim that to happen until 2020 and go far beyond that.

It’s just 5 years from now!

Machine-to-Machine (M2M) is another one of the hottest buzzwords existing in the tech arena today. It is essentially a more technical way of saying IoT. Let’s put it this way that “M2M is a way how IoT is implemented or achieved”. It’s about machines talking (actually, communicating) to machines, regardless of whatever they are. Think in terms of your daily life objects. For example, your watch talking to your smartphone, your car talking to your garage, your coffee machine talking to your door lock as it unlocks, and so on. The possibilities are unlimited. If such things talk to other things, isn’t that the Network of Things? When this network operates over the Internet, it becomes the Internet of Things!

We all know that already, so, whats the point here? The point is that we need to understand the M2M drives IoT- and that’s how they differ! They are not same, let’s be clear on this. I do not want to dive into the discussion of what IoT and M2M are and what they are not beyond this point. There is no one standard definition, opinion or perspective and these terms are very relative. However, what I do want to discuss here is how the M2M landscape could evolve in the next coming years and what essentially would be required from the technology standpoint from various industry segments. This may tell us how IoT use cases may look like in the years to come. But, before we can dive into this discussion, we really need to understand what is M2M landscape today from a more strategic perspective.

Keep reading.

M2M as we know it, TODAY!

Generally speaking, M2M today is not really things talking to things. It’s more like things talking to a powerful centralized platform. Lets call this powerful centralized platform as backend. What this means is that a large majority (but not all) of the M2M devices used today only talk to a designated backend. This is because, these devices are configured to (1) collect raw (sensor) data, (2) perform limited set of processing on or around the data internally and then (3) dispatch this data to some backend. This backend usually resides in a (public or private) cloud (oh snap! :-/ another buzzword!). Once the data arrives at the backend, then the backend can perform all sorts of complex, smart, creative, data brokering & analytics (Big Data Computing :-/) functions - the so called “business functions” to deliver value. This backend is where - usually - the real business logic, key value proposition & differentiation from the competition lives, for anyone who claims to provide end-to-end (E2E) M2M solutions today. This means that selling the E2E M2M solutions is most of the times telling a customer that “look how much value our service (actually, backend business functions) can bring to your business”. Today, the M2M devices that send the data to the backend usually do not create key differentiation for a typical E2E M2M solution provider (“solution provider” from now on). Likewise, the applications that get the data from the backend to provide an easy-to-understand-the-service view through apps & web, are really not too much of a differentiator. This is because, the solutions providers prefer to remain device & User Experience (UX) agnostic. This brings complexity to their backends, but they get a lot of flexibility and freedom in return. As a result, most of the real power of M2M solutions sits in the backend - the platform.

Today, you can feel that the M2M (or generally speaking, the IoT) industry is in a state of war on platforms!

Who empowers M2M today

The fact that M2M today is mainly the war on platforms does not mean that they are the only driving force behind enabling the M2M ecosystem. Platforms exist because they are supported by a lot of other players in the industry. Platforms are not all-inclusive standalone systems. They are about bringing just the right set of expertise & enablers in one place and make them available for others. So, what are these expertise & enablers that are making platforms, and ultimately M2M, so powerful?

The M2M today is empowered by several other players providing variable set of expertise and enablers across the industry. To help us look at the big picture of the M2M industry landscape, lets have a look at the industry segmentation below.

As you see, from the technology standpoint the entire M2M industry is driven by devices, communication, cloud, platform and clients. Here is how its happening today:

Devices

The hardware vendors from all areas of technology including, but not limited to, sensors manufacturers, chips makers, modules manufacturers, device manufacturers & assembly line providers etc. really form the foundation of the entire M2M industry today. It’s obvious that without devices, no data can be collected resulting in nothing talking to nothing. Many, but not all of these folks also deliver their own device management solutions that can be integrated into third party platforms. However, advancements in the hardware segment happens relativity slower compared to the software side of things.

Think the likes of Telit.

Communication

These are Telcos. They are by far one of the most significant players in the M2M landscape. They influence devices, provide all aspects of communication infrastructure (with the help of infrastructure vendors), operate data centers and cloud environments, and to some extend, develop their own platforms. However, talking of platforms, they still aren’t leading the market in that space, so they tend to either acquire, or (exclusively) partner with the platform providers. These folks also influence the clients and drive to a limited extend the UX. Telcos are the only players in the M2M race that touches every part of the value chain. They stand a real chance to define the future of IoT, generally speaking, if they begin to rethink their business today.

Think the likes of Vodafone.

Cloud

These folks are independent data center operators and infrastructure providers. They typically are IT companies penetrating into the data center business. They indeed are a real threat to Telcos, when it comes to cloud infrastructure, however, they are far from operating their own communication infrastructure. Usually, they are the first choice of platform providers for their platform deployment. Many of the cloud vendors also provide some sort of platform capabilities, such as, providing APIs to perform data analytics, management & messaging to name a few. However, they normally just enable others to deliver value through their M2M solution platforms, rather than developing one themselves.

Think the likes of Amazon Web Services.

Platform

This is where the real value of M2M solutions live today. These folks implement and deliver differentiated business functions and new value propositions which are device vendor & communication provider agnostic. These value propositions sell! This is the place where M2M solutions start to become more visible and the data collected from the devices start to transform itself into valuable information. The capabilities like, data analytics, batch, stream & real-time computing, remote monitoring & control, tracking, and so many others are implemented here. Many platform providers even influence the UX on the clients. They either deliver their own clients, or enable others to use their platform to self-develop the clients. Today, platform is the place where innovation is happening at much faster pace than any other of these industry segments. This is where the war for M2M leadership is more prominent - TODAY!

Some platform players do influence the device segment through their certification or partner programs.

Think the likes of Axeda.

Clients

Clients are the visual and UX drivers in the entire M2M solution development chain. This is where software developers sit. It includes every aspect of defining M2M solution experience from the user perspective, such as, UX, visual design, icons, apps, web dashboard etc. These folks make use of the data exposed by the platforms to deliver the clients. These clients heavily rely upon the communication business, however, usually do not influence it (unless they are Whatsapp ;-)!).

Think the likes of iOS, Android & web developers.

Summing up

That’s the M2M of today - as we know it!

Now that we have established the context of where we are today and how the industry is fragmented, let me stop the discussion here. Subsequently, in the next episode I will continue the discussion based on what we have read today and I hope with your help, we may be able to make this discussion as productive and widespread as possible for the greater good of the tech industry.

Stay tuned, keep following, keep sharing further & thank you for reading!

Another thing before I forget, of course,  do not be shy in expressing your thoughts and opinions in the comments.

Stay safe!

Rethinking the Telco Business

There is a major difference between the business mentality of Telco & IT industries today. This difference is normally not spoken out loud. However, who ever understands the business priorities of the two industries should be able to feel this difference. For everyone’s sake, let me give you a flavor of what this difference in mentality of Telco & IT industries sound like from a very high level:

Telco industry believes

We provide the fundamental communication infrastructure that is driving today’s Internet & mobile services. Every connected product, either hardware or software & services, require our connectivity infrastructure to function & generate revenue. If we do not deliver connectivity, then no one could deliver connected products. Therefore, we are THE driving force behind the growth of digital economies & keeping the IT industry alive. Period.

IT industry believes

We are the ones who develop software & services for every industry & directly influence our customers’ business. Our customers do not care how our products work, as far as they deliver what they expect from them. We are the real innovators because we keep on introducing new software & services very rapidly independent of the underlying communication infrastructure. We see connectivity as a commodity and expect it to be everywhere every time, whenever we need. If we don’t deliver our software & services, then no one would require connectivity. Therefore, we are THE driving force behind the growth of digital economies & keeping the Telco industry alive. Period.

Okay! I do understand that this is a controversial discussion to have and many of you may disagree in one way or the other with what is expressed above. However, for a few moments lets be very honest on the priorities of Telcos & IT industry:

• The Telcos want to sell as much connectivity as possible regardless of who is the service provider (think Vodafone! works behind services of Amazon Kindle, BMW, Daimler, Audi, VW, TomTom, etc.).
• The IT companies want to sell as much software & services as possible regardless of who is the connectivity provider (think Whatsapp! works with any type of internet connectivity (2G, 3G, 4G, DSL, VDSL, WiFi, etc.), regardless of the provider).

This is a fact & major difference in how these two industries operate, today!
Let’s stick to the Telcos’ perspective in this discussion.

Telco transformation into IT

In spite of the staggering rate of growth of IT services today, the Telcos’ main business driver remains providing connectivity by selling more and more SIM cards. This does not mean that Telcos do not realize that their connectivity is becoming a commodity. They really do! However, the Telco industry today is very very brand conscious. Every Telco provider believes they are a brand that everyone loves. Also, there is an oblivious belief among Telcos that they are a consumer brand that their subscribers adore. This perspective of Telcos is not completely wrong, but it is not completely right either. Unfortunately, what most Telcos do not seem to realize is that they are not a brand that consumers love, like they love Apples, Samsungs and Googles of today. Once, I asked a senior Telco executive that “how many times have you seen people queued up in front of your stores since 4 a.m. in the morning just because they want to be the first ones to buy your product?” What I got in response was utter frustration & anger that made me the center of attention, as if I have done a crime.

I’m not saying that Telcos are not consumer-loved brands. They are, indeed! However, not to the level what many IT companies (including startups) have achieved. This is because what Telcos provide (connectivity) is hidden behind the scenes and not noticed by the consumers, until it malfunctions. All consumers see is that their Whatsapp, Google Maps, Mail, Games etc. work great and have exciting user experience. They tend to give all the good credit to the services running on top of the Telco connectivity. As soon as the connectivity fails, all the blame goes to the Telcos (Oh my God, what a crap Internet connectivity!). How many times do we hear consumers appreciating the connectivity, while they are enjoying the service experience? For exactly this reason, the Telcos need to understand that if they want to compete with brands like Apple, Samsung & Google, WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter etc., then they must deliver software & services that are NOT restricted to their networks only. The Telcos need to leave their egos behind and start to work collaboratively. Think about it! What if consumers could buy a service from one Telco and use it over the network of the other Telco - seamlessly? This is a complete opposite of how Telco industry thinks today. However, it is not too far when the connectivity business of the Telcos will become a low cost commodity to afford, just like water, electricity and gas, leaving them to be used as dumb data transmission pipes. Every one will (or perhaps already!) expect connectivity to just BE THERE. That’s when the services that Telcos provide will differentiate them from the competition & help them introduce new revenue streams. The Telcos must become software hubs and develop their own services in-house, instead of merely taking third party services and reselling them as a white labeled solution. White labeling services won’t generate any IPR for Telcos, but becoming software hubs will. Telcos must invest!

Once the Telcos become software & service providers, then they will naturally get a competitive edge on existing IT industry because of having their own connectivity infrastructure. Their capability of planning, deploying, operating networks, roaming, charging & billing, when coupled with the knowledge of developing, designing, UX, deploying & operating software & services will establish them as extremely strong players in the industry who can really revolutionize the technology landscape from every perspective. It is much easier for Telcos to become IT players than for IT players to become Telcos. With 2015 beginning to unroll, I hope the decision makers in the Telco strategy sphere engage to redefine their businesses for the greater good. The race has started, but there is a long way to go.

Telcos urgently need to transform themselves into IT player - now!

Please share your opinion in the comments to help me verify mine.

Successful leaders fail successfully

Back in 2009, when I was more than half way through with my doctorate research, I got an opportunity for participating in a leadership training workshop called “Leaders do not fall out of the sky”. I can still recall the feeling when I first read this title. It was telling the reader that you can also become a leader, if you are not one yet. It made the reader think almost immediately that leadership is a skills that is learned, not inherited. This very thought was convincing enough for me to go and test my leadership potential in this workshop. So, I registered and went for it.

Few days later, the training began. I reached the venue on time and so did every other participant. There were more or less 15 participants joining from different departments of the university. I sat next to a blond innocent-faced German guy named Alexander (Alex). He was below average height (about 5  feet 6 inches) according to German standards, however, quiet well built. One could easily tell that he works out pretty regularly. After a while, the training began.

Normally, one would expect the kick-off of such a training with an introduction round, allowing all the participants to get to know each other better. However, the training instructor, who was a lady in her late 30s, did the complete opposite. She asked each one of us the look at the person sitting next to us. Literally, do not talk, do not ask, do not chat - just look! So, we did exactly that. I turned to Alex and he turned to me and we started staring at one another in an uncomfortable silence between us and in the room. In that very moment, I was thinking what is it that this guy is possibly thinking about me? After about 30 seconds of staring at each other like idiots, we heard our instructor’s voice saying; “Now speculate. Speculate about what you think would be the personality of your partner and quietly take your notes.”. That’s when it started to make some sense. We started making opinions about one another in our heads and jotted them down quietly. This activity went on for about 10 minutes. In just ten minutes, I was able create a long list of personality traits that I thought could be true about Alex depending upon how he looked like. Afterwards each participant shared their notes about their partner’s personality traits and the listening participants expressed if they agree to those traits or not. The person who was discussed also verified how true the observations were about him. Most of us failed to predict each others personality. That’s when we learned the purpose of this exercise. We were supposed to experience failure! The message from this exercise was clear that for learning to lead, the first thing you need is to fail. No one can become a leadership material without experiencing what I call successful failures!

Successful failure is a failure that is inevitable after doing all that's possible to avoid it, resulting in learning what not to do when.

The learning from this entire exercise was that the leadership is an ability to train one’s mind over time through repeated successful failures until you begin to see failure as an opportunity to learn and improve more than viewing it as a liability. This was a big learning. What it meant was that just like we tell our mind to remain optimistic in difficult times hoping things will become better someday, or a baby keeps on training his mind on how to walk in spite of numerous failed attempts; leadership is an ability that is learned after repeated successful failures. That makes successful failure one of the most important prerequisites to become a leader. Every time you experience successful failure, you are one step closer to learning to lead. This learning is a never ending process. No matter how big shot leader one has become, there will always be something new to learn through failure. Many people tend to be part of successful failure on purpose to experience the consequences, so they can improve further. However, those who can learn from failures become leaders. Those who don’t, they remain wondering why they failed. It’s a good thing to experience successful failure. I do not know any true leaders in the world that haven’t successfully failed. Even the most influential leaders in human history experienced successful failure taking it as a learning, not liability.

No one is a born leader. Period.

Everything has a purpose and so does failure. So keep viewing your successful failure as another opportunity to add new learning to your profile. If you can train your mind to think in terms of successful failure being an opportunity, then you are on the path of becoming leadership material. All you need to lead successfully is to successfully fail.

This is a learning from the first 20 minutes of the leadership training. It was a 2 day workshop!

Are you leadership material?

Do you know yourself?

We, humans, are very complex creatures. Every single one of us is different in one way or the other. In spite of our differences, we are excellent at creating social environments for living and working together, because we are naturally made to live in societies, groups, tribes but definitely not in isolation. However, this very social nature of the humans tend to create conflicts - small or big - quite frequently in our daily lives. These conflicts are created mainly due to the differences in our priorities or our ways of approaching the same problem differently. How each one of us handle these conflicts define our personalities. Now, take a moment and ask yourself how you have handled your most recent conflict in your professional or private life, and then assess, if your approach was appreciated by your counterpart or made that conflict even difficult to solve? The way you handled that particular conflict will help you understand your personality. Think about your personality.

Can you define what is it like?

Do you understand it?

Do you know yourself?

Your leadership potential

I know that all of this sounds very philosophical, and many would think that this thinking about the personality thing is just a time waster. However, our personality, which is in fact our opinion on how we should handle situations around us, is by far the most influential and vital part of our leadership potential. Any leadership involves interacting with people, many people; and our personality tells us how do we manage these interactions. Period.

In my professional career, I have experienced many personality traits of the leaders usually demonstrated by my superiors. I’m sure you have too. If you ask me to shrink all those experiences down to find out the very basic building blocks of the leadership potential, I would say that it all drills down to three fundamental personality traits - empathy, respect & guidance.

Let me elaborate.

Empathy

Empathy is about feeling what others around you feel. In my opinion, it is the most important personality trait for anyone in the leadership role. It’s about understanding people that work for you on a more personal level. For any great leader, empathy must be on the top priority, as it helps establishing that personal connection with your team members that goes a long way and helps establishing trust. In order to lead effectively, a leader must be perceived by his team as an “always there caretaking” team member, not a “commander or dictator”. If your team views you as a go-to person for open & honest discussions about their issues, then it means that they feel comfortable around you. Being perceived like that helps gain the trust of the team, without which no leadership can survive.

Respect

Respect is about giving space and listening to your team. Empathy helps you win respect. Although, to be respected is an absolute vital ingredient for a leader (perhaps a separate topic), I am talking more about leaders giving respect to their team members. Many leaders develop a habit of thinking that what they believe is the best way to go, and they must prove it to their subordinates. As a result, they tend to disregard the opinions of their team members, sometimes even without listening, merely to prove their authority on them. I have been in numerous professional team discussions, where the better solution is disregarded only because it came from a less experienced colleague, or a senior colleague is not happy about it. Happening of such events in a team in the presence of a leader shows personality trait of the leader that is very disrespectful toward the team members and ultimately results in individuals becoming demotivated, which is the single most biggest productivity killer for any team! It is easy to end up disrespecting without noticing it. It can happen by not responding to emails & questions asked or not allowing your team members to challenge your thoughts and present their own or being evidently biased toward a single individual in your team or not appreciating contributions and saying thank you or being unavailable at the time when the team or an individual needs you or not trusting the team’s ability and so on. In the end, giving respect to your team will bring the same level of respect back to you. Showing empathy is how great leaders begin to give respect!

Guidance

Guidance is about connecting the right dots at the right time. It is about providing focus to the team and seeing what your team cannot see. It’s about understanding the big picture, and helping your team to understand it too. Individuals in any team are usually focused on their specific objectives. It’s a job of a leader to monitor those specific objectives of each individual and in the end help them connect their specific objectives together to deliver the bigger objective of the team. This is not an easy job to do. Out of many skills, it requires at least that the leader has a clear focus, good cross-functional exposure, understanding of the overall strategic vision, awareness of the abilities of team members & quick decision making ability. I have seen managers in my career, who indulge themselves into so many different topics that they become completely unaware of the activities of their team members. No one can do everything alone. Any good leader is bound to provide guidance to their teams and help them focus on their goals. People expect to learn from their leaders and this learning is only possible through clear guidance.

Be your own judge

Empathy, respect and guidance are the core traits of a successful leadership. These traits require you to believe that your best strength is your people - your team. They help you establish a line between ego & knowledge. They teach you how to establish trust and rely on the strengths of others that you do not posses yourself. Anyone having these three personality traits has a potential to lead and drive change.

Think you can lead? If so, do you have these personality traits?

We are not doing real M2M, YET!

We all know that Machine-to-Machine or M2M is hot in today's business landscape. It is one of the core concepts that will enable anything to connect to the Internet. However, is connecting to Internet and being able to transmit data all that M2M is supposed to do? If you think a bit more closely, the M2M era that we are living in today has a very specific definition. We put it under the telematics umbrella almost everywhere. Today, any device that offers no or very limited interaction with a user and can connect to the Internet (preferably using a SIM card) for transmitting sensor or self-generated non-rich data to some server is considered part of the M2M telematics ecosystem. Such devices largely drive today's M2M industry by offering the capabilities of generating a lot variety & volume of data at high velocity, the so-called "Big Data". The services that are developed on top of this data require usual software development, which was existent even before M2M became a big-shot in the industry. As a result, today the real value of M2M sits in the creativity that combines the potential of these devices with the software living somewhere in the backend - or cloud if you want some hype! Really! How else M2M operates today? Anyone who can come up with a creative way of using the devices' data and offer it through the software layer gets all the attention. Look around at the M2M products, say in, connected cars, smart homes, asset trackers or similar industries. Most of the companies use similar devices that generate similar data, but they couple these devices with different use case offerings on the software layer to differentiate from one-another. That's it! That's M2M today. I am not saying this is wrong or this is too easy to achieve or something that is not the right way of implementing M2M. All I want to say is that this is not real M2M, and that has yet to come. We are just scratching the surface and the rich M2M era has yet to come.

Real M2M - The times yet to come

So, having said all that, the natural questions that comes to mind are, how do we define real M2M? How would it differ from what we have today? And tons other. To answer all those questions, we first need to tell ourselves that every technological revolution has a strong element of impossibility that drives us to think that something is not going to happen, ever. What this means is that in every era, the future of technology is predicted, and many times things are considered impossible to happen, just because they seem too unusual. As an example, think of those times when there were no airplanes. It would have been miraculous for people in those times to believe that hundreds of tons of steel can fly in the sky with nothing to support underneath, and on top of that, it can carry passengers and heavy luggage across continents. In those times, you would not even bother to explain or even able to imagine the luxury, comfort, speed and entertainment aspects of airlines. I am sure that 3 decades ago, no one would have believed that there would be autonomous self-driving cars today. But now, this is a reality and we may be able to use such cars in our life times. It does not look impossible anymore. In the same way, defining what real M2M could hold for us require us to kill for a while this element of impossibility from our minds. We have to believe that what we think is impossible today, will become a norm tomorrow.

Now, back to real M2M. According to how industry is shaping today, I believe that the M2M ecosystem will evolve itself into a data-rich, rich-data ecosystem that will no more be limited to the raw sensor data from devices, only. It will expand beyond the telematics industry into consumer electronics and products, where it will target industries in every sphere of life, such as, clothing, food, entertainment, care, socializing etc. The devices in M2M arena will become more powerful to take the role of service providers and consumers at the same time, while being agnostic towards the underlying network infrastructure. Rich consumer devices, such as smartphones, tablets and the likes, if still exist, will become M2M terminals, where everyone will be able to offer their own personalized services based on their own content. These device will be able to share each other's resources to optimize computing performance seamlessly. The M2M devices will come equipped with virtualized environments allowing them to host multiple operating systems for various use cases. Everyone will carry their own personal cloud with (integrated) web servers hosting mobile services in their bags & pockets, and will even obliviously spend time in or wear everyday in different form factors. These will be the times when the data from M2M devices will be shared directly, without having to upload it to any 3rd party server in the cloud. The permissions & data control will return to consumers, whereas, the connectivity to the Internet will become a daily life commodity and basic human right. These devices will be able to negotiate service level agreements (SLA) seamlessly & intelligently with one another to provide & consume services, depending upon the control profiles, context & usage behavior of consumers. New server & computing platforms, similar to the one I have hinted in my book, will emerge more widely & evolve rapidly. Business industry will completely revolutionize itself, as the focus will shift more and more on mobility, seamlessness, (autonomous) personal service offerings and access & generation of (context-aware) content from anywhere, anytime and from any form factor. Today, we cannot define and even firmly envisage the business models that could be possible in such technologically rich era. However, our children or their children will live in times that we may not be able to even think of today. In these times, we will find answers to many questions on the privacy and security front, as everyone will literally keep & own ones own data. As a result, everyone will be able to define and own their services, such as, the Facebooks, Googles & Amazons of today, as they walk through the streets carefree, while their devices do the talking! 

This will be the era of real M2M!