M2M, IoT, and UC

Vodafone just released its annual M2M Barometer report. Machine to Machine communications is growing like gangbusters. According to Vodafone’s research, 27% of companies surveyed have M2M projects already in place. And 42% of those projects are designed to help companies better connect to their customers.

For a quick example of M2M, consider fleet management. A truck can report its location and status to a central service that monitors the status of each to determine whether they need service, book the service appointment after checking the vehicles route map and available service times, and notify the driver of the appointment via text or some other automated process.

Although the M2M Barometer report heavily emphasizes the critical role of communications and communications infrastructure as part of the M2M ecosystem, surprisingly nothing at all regarding unified communications is discussed. Even though it is clear from this report and others that human intervention is going to be required to close the loop on many M2M transactions, UC isn’t getting much attention at all.

This is perplexing. If you think through the M2M workflow, at some point the central server is going to identify a problem or situation that it cannot handle or that meets specific criteria for human escalation. A fairly simple application can be constructed that would take the problem, run it against a database of experts or problem solvers, determine from presence information who is online, and immediately initiate a collaboration session, complete with instant access to the data causing the concern, in real-time creating the ad hoc response team capable of addressing the problem. This is enterprise UC at its finest, and specifically would enhance the 42% of the projects targeted to better customer connectivity.

But not yet. Virtually none of the M2M vendors are talking about UC yet, and virtually none of the UC vendors are talking yet about M2M. More on this in my next blog.

As to the Internet of Things (IoT), the Vodafone M2M Barometer report makes a very interesting distinction between M2M, which it sees as industrial and corporate applications, and IoT, which it sees as involving consumer applications. I’m not convinced this is a productive division of the problem space, but I am certain that UC could play an important role either way.

The Vodafone M2M Barometer report is available for free at https://m2m-mktg.vodafone.com/barometer2015

2 Responses to "M2M, IoT, and UC" - Add Yours

Art Rosenberg 7/20/2015 8:10:38 AM

Joseph,

You are right about the role that people will play in any kind of business process, and UC flexibility is necessary for contacts both between people and between processes and people. While M2M applications certainly are important, they must also include "CEBP' (Communications Enabled Business Processes) functions as well for a number of practical operational reasons.

Art Rosenberg 7/20/2015 8:26:57 AM

I should add that once people are involved with business process communications, BYOD and mobile, multimodal device-independence will be the norm.