We have already gone from connectivity focus to focus on operational value: faster, cheaper, greener, safer and so on. Pain and results are easy to quantify and ROI calculations fairly straight forward. But the actual development of the solution requires a M2M Service Enabler to become affordable to develop and maintain. This is old news together with my mantra: “data is the gold of M2M“. But it is interesting to see that the service enablement space is heating up.
To start with, my Swedish M2M Service Enablement alliance just said welcome to member number 14 and all Swedish mobile operators but 3 are sponsors. The members in general report growing interest and business as customers are becoming educated and ready to move. Next week 12 Swedish M2M companies will join me going to Düsseldorf as bilateral partners to the M2M Summit where we have a common stand and speaker slots. That is more M2M service enablers then ever participating in an international M2M event arrangement I have done up until now.
Earlier this week Telit announced their acquisition of ILS Technologies for $8.5m cash and Telenor Connexion the purchase of technology and IPR from Iowa. Both ILS and Iowa are M2M Service Enablers! Increasing M&A activity in a segment is always a sign of market consolidation and a result of executives being convinced that they know where the industry is going and where they want to be. I expect many more M&A deals with M2M Service Enablers involved over the next year or two.
My key advise to M2M Service Enablers remain: focus, focus, focus. As the M2M business becomes glocal you will meet competition from a lot of places and players. But customers only see two or three players in any given industry or niche.
connectcompute 