October 30, 2014
Gartner certainly got it right when they put IoT on the top of the hype curve. This many people have never been interested in what I am working with, not even when I worked with Wi-Fi. Last week for example, Stockholm Business Region, an agency promoting Stockholm, organized a breakfast meeting. But this one was about IoT and 150 people signed up within one hour! Since they had room for 80 persons in the venue they had to shut down the registration and find a bigger place. They ended up with the largest cinema in Stockholm, some 600 registered people, exhibitors in the entrance hall and a strong line-up of speakers.
I am managing an
IoT Idea Challenge for an EU organization, EIT ICT Labs, and we set our target to 100 submissions. The submission period was September and with one day to go we had received 72 cases. The last day we received 91! For IoT to change our society, businesses and lives the way we want, everyone has to be involved. Therefore I’m glad that 18% of the submissions came from women – at least a good start. Today we announced the
eleven finalists – all amazingly interesting young companies who will
pitch in Stockholm November 13.
Well, now when a lot of people got the first part right – it is time to look into IoT – let us start prototyping and testing in order to get the whole thing right.
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IoE, IoT, M2M | Tagged: apps, Gartner, Hype curve, Internet of Everything, Internet of Things, IoT, M2M, Machine-to-Machine | 
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Posted by magnusmelander
October 16, 2014
IoT is hotter than ever! Gartner just placed IoT at Peak of Inflated Expectations in their Hype Curve and forecast 5-10 years until the Plateau of Productivity. But our baby is growing much faster than anything else we have seen before and I stick to my previous view that our baby will be grown up, but still young, 2016 after only three years as teenager. Good enough technology and infrastructure are in place since a couple of years and when organizations started to go from Powerpoint and thinking to trials and pilots we reached the teens. Four things have been missing to leave the teens behind: solid participation from the IT players, a hot M&A market, active and seriously engaged enterprises and efficient easy-to-use prototyping tools for users of IoT. All these things are starting to happen now which is one of the reasons why I dare to challenge Gartner on their projection. But there is another aspect of IoT which is underestimated: how the value is created.
In most cases we build something and when it’s done we start harvest. And if customers like what we built it takes off. It might take a couple of years at least to plan, develop and start produce, then we start market and after another year or so it might take off. That explains Gartner’s 5-10 years to Plateau of Productivity, if one ever gets there. But IoT applications deliver value when the information created is distributed to an IT system, shows up in an app, makes an alarm go off somewhere or change a road sign. Initially all IoT applications had to be created end to end – from sensor to terminal – which made them expensive to make and maintain. But now we can leverage existing networks, platforms, tools, terminals and applications making it much cheaper and quicker. So far we have seen this primarily in the consumer market where a connected sensor providing data to an app has been good enough. In enterprises data management and delivery is more complicated and changes in processes and business models takes time, but they are getting there. When they do, the operational value (cheaper, faster, etc) will be obvious and the strategic value (brand, innovation, employer attractiveness, etc) will be visible in the horizon. One only has to look at what
GE is doing with Industrial Internet to understand that the impact will be massive.
Everyone promoting the story about billions of connected devices delivering data to impressive Big Data systems creating trillions of $ benefits clearly put IoT at the peak of inflated expectations. But all hard-working organizations and entrepreneurs working on industry or company specific IoT applications, well-integrated and cleverly implemented, are changing the world very fast. These efforts will start pay off soon putting competitors who haven’t started yet in a very difficult situation similar to when the frequent flyer program happened or Richard Fosbury jumped 2.24 at the Olympic Games in Maxico City 1968 using a “redicolous” new technique.
The only major difference between when we connected people and businesses to the Internet and when we connect things is that ignorance will not be an acceptable excuse this time. Beyond some clever start-ups the winners will be organizations who best understand when and how to improve their business using IoT solutions.
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1 Comment | Business Models, IoE, IoT, M2M, Tools and platforms, User Interaction | Tagged: Business model, efficiency, Fosbury, Fosbury-flop, Gartner, GE, hype, Hype curve, Internet of Everything, IoE, IoT, M2M, operational value, safety, security, smartphone, strategic value, sustainability | Permalink
Posted by magnusmelander
September 11, 2014
History repeats itself. Social robots have appeared in books and movies for years and always felt far out. But all of a sudden they say hello to you! I participated in a panel at Digital Health Days in Stockholm and one of the speakers was a blue Giraff with the avatar of their CEO Stephen von Rump, present in Saint Lewis, Missouri. They have been developing their social robot focusing on home care. It can sit, stand, talk, nod, move etc, and in our case it was Stephen’s face and voice talking to us. In their concept the Giraff becomes the gateway for all sensors and devices needed in a particular home as well as for all service providers involved including family and friends. Today the price for a Giraff is in the ball park of 10K$ but Stephen mentioned there is more to be done on the hardware.
In May I met Francesca Iannibelli, COO at
Hands company, who presented their cute social robot Adam. She gave a great presentation and left me with a feeling that they will deliver well.
Philip’s iCat,
eMuu,
KASPAR,
Furhat,
Leonardo,
Maggie,
Tico,
Anthropos,
PROBO, the stair climbing
ARTI and
Double are other examples of social robots.
It is easy to just reject the idea of using social robots but given the huge global challenge to provide desired care given the resources available I am convinced careful and clever use of social robots is one of the core components of care 2.0. Needless to say I’m glad we have
Robotdalen here in Sweden!
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1 Comment | Healthcare, IoE, IoT, M2M, User Interaction | Tagged: Adam, Anthropos, Arti, Double, eMuu, Furhat, giraff, iCat, Internet of Everything, Internet of Things, IoT, Kaspar, Leonardo, Maggie, Probo, social robots, Tico, usability, User interaction | Permalink
Posted by magnusmelander
July 31, 2014
Less is more! A young team in Sweden, Shortcut Labs, are developing a small really useful generic BLE-connected button called flic which you can program to do almost anything with your smartphone. OK? Well, there are three ways to use it: click, double-click and keep pressed. And so what? It’s easily programmable. And what should I use it for? A remote trigger to take photos with your smartphone. Call home from your car with a single click on a button. Turn on Spotify and one of your three favorite playlists on your MC. Tell your family where you are walking if you don’t feel hundred percent safe. Start Siri. And so on.
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Leave a Comment » | Consumer market, Inspiring example, IoE, IoT, M2M, User Interaction | Tagged: BLE, Bluetooth, button, Internet of Everything, Internet of Things, IoT, SMSE, usability, User interaction | Permalink
Posted by magnusmelander
July 26, 2014
The creation of the Internet of Everything has been going on for a while now. It is easy to find estimates of the number of connected devices some years from now and how much the market will be worth but still hard to find the evidences that it actually happens and in which pace. A year ago I declared that we entered the teenage phase meaning that early moving customer started to go from power point and plans to pilot trials and roll-out. I still believe we are in the teenage phase but another important indicator – mergers and acquisitions – is starting to show that we are coming closer to the real take off. Because of this I will try to track relevant M&A deals in my blog onwards.
Intel recently acquired
Basis Science with their advanced health tracker,
Google has spent about $5B acquiring
Waze,
Nest and
Dropcam but PTC’s recent acquisition of
Axeda for $170 million in cash following their $112 million
Thingworx acquisition in December are even more interesting to me.
PTC provides systems and solutions to a long list of very large companies globally and they obviously believe being a leader in IoT system and service enablement is key. I believe the Internet of Everything will be grown-up in less than two years from now and insist that the key difference from when people and companies were connected to the Internet is that ignorance will not be an acceptable excuse this time.
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1 Comment | Business Models, Cloud computing, IoE, IoT, M2M, M2M Service Enablers, Tools and platforms | Tagged: Axeda, Basis, Business model, Dropcam, Google, Intel, Internet of Everything, Internet of Things, M&A, Nest, PTC, ThingWorx, Waze | Permalink
Posted by magnusmelander
July 21, 2014
One of the most talked about areas for Internet of Things is Smart Cities. Cities themselves invest to become one. Most of the large players in IoT focus on Smart Cities. There are events, predictions, articles and show cases everywhere and each and everyone use their own definition of Smart Cities. A city is a very complex and dynamic location which from an ICT point of view could be described as a system of systems. It is obvious that sub-systems could be more efficient using IoT solutions and that the overall system of systems could be improved if the data collected was shared cleverly between the systems. No wonder Smart Cities is a perfect topic to focus on both for suppliers and municipalities.
But how much smarter has cities become over the last years? Well, there are of course impressive reference cases here and there and a lot of sub-systems in a lot of cities have become better using IoT solutions. But the size and complexity of pulling it all together in a city is difficult to deal with both from practical and technical perspectives.
This is why I am really impressed by Infracontrol, their pragmatic approach to Smart Cities and what they have been able to do. They started about 20 years ago to help cities connecting mainly traffic related things like tunnel alarms, ventilation systems and traffic lights. As they grew bigger in several cities and with new applications they developed Infracontrol Online™ 2003 to connect cities and citizens for better services. Today they have 56 Swedish municipalities using Infracontrol Online™ and their first ones in Portugal in place as well. Their customers report 60% better service quality, 30% savings in maintenance expenses, a lot of energy savings and higher citizen satisfaction. Sounds smart to me! Needless to say Infracontrol is a member of the Swedish SMSE-alliance!
Get inspired by Jenny Gustavsson’s 5 minute pitch on Infracontrol at Internet of Everything For Real™ 2014!
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Leave a Comment » | Cloud computing, Inspiring example, IoE, IoT, ITS, M2M, M2M Service Enablers, Safety and Security, Transportation, Utilities | Tagged: Infracontrol, Internet of Everything, Internet of Everything For Real™, Internet of Things, IOE2014, IoT, M2M, Municipality, Smart City, SMSE, sustainability | Permalink
Posted by magnusmelander
July 4, 2014
Better use of energy is one of the key challenges to our society today and smart metering is the first step towards a smarter electricity system. It makes it possible to understand the overall level of electricity consumption and for example compare it with historical data or similar buildings. But in order to understand which devices consumes what in a house, office or apartment we have had to put a meter on that specific device for a while and track the result.
But
Watty, a small start-up in Stockholm, is taking a completely different and much more elegant and scalable approach – they listen to the electricity and identify patterns they recognize. In a similar way as
Shazam identifies music they can see fridges, heat pumps and washing machines. Their detective mounted on the smart meter send the data to the cloud where Watty use their clever algorithms to analyze and report back in an easy to use app. They can even detect appliances that might go on fire or an open door to a fridge.
I think this is brilliant and the right approach to better energy use. Take a couple of minutes to listen to Eva Andersson at Watty presenting what they do in the Case Marathon at
Internet of Everything For Real™ 2014 in Stockholm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyfBrbh840o
Watty is of course a member of
SMSE together with 27 other Swedish start-ups in the IoE space.
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Posted by magnusmelander
July 1, 2014
Entrepreneurs have always made the difference. And will always be the ones pushing the boundaries and finding new innovative solutions to problems. They continuously bet their time, energy, savings, past and future on making their ideas fly. And they are always the ones to create the next big thing. When we look back at how we ended up where we are, it is easy to pin-point the inventions, individuals and companies that made difference. But it is very difficult to figure out which few of all thousands of entrepreneurs that will make the difference onwards.
Internet of Things is now incredibly hot and most people would agree that it will impact states, industries and life of people around the globe. Governments are making big statements and big investments in IoT to put their country in good position. Analysts and other experts claim they have the answers to what will happen, when and how much. And operators, consultants and vendors are fighting for an important role in what to come.
If we read the books of recent history we will find that the Internet started off as a research project but entrepreneurs made it what it is today. ISP:s connected people and businesses to the Internet, companies like US Robotics provided fast affordable modems and remote access solutions, Netscape and others created browsers and Alta Vista powerful search engines. Then thousands of web designers started to make good-looking web sites followed by CMS systems for more organized creation and maintenance of webs. While organizations started to benefit from the efficiency and improved service possibilities using the Internet, entrepreneurs exploited new innovative ways of doing things and completely new ideas. And ever since we have seen new innovative companies growing from nothing to big or huge: Amazon, Google, Twitter, SalesForce.com, LinkedIn, Spotify, Skype, Klarna, iZettle and TrueCaller just to mention a few – yes I am Swedish… Nobody figured out before hand how the Internet value chains would look like, which business models would be successful, the impact it would make or which companies would become the new giants.
Internet of Things is a misleading name. It’s the same Internet and we are just adding things to it. That’s why I prefer Internet of Everything. It is safe to argue that the development of Internet of Everything will follow a similar path as the Internet of People and Businesses. The main differences are that it will happen faster and ignorance will not be an acceptable excuse this time. It will be entrepreneurs once again who form the future and there are many of them around already! I have 28 of them in my
Swedish M2M Service Enabler alliance alone but there are thousands of them around the world. And they are fighting hard every day to prove to customers, partners and investors that their idea, solution or approach will be a great success.
I would welcome more appreciation and support for the entrepreneurs! They don’t need a lot and it is paying customers who should fund most of their development. But a little help to go abroad to meet potential customers and partners and, most importantly, commercial pilot projects at home would be a very good start. There are initiatives already including startup and incubation programs, competitions like EIT ICT Labs Idea Challenge, Cisco’s IoT challenge and IPSO Alliance IoT Competition as well as investors looking into this field. But let’s give the entrepreneurs what they need to make this happen for us!
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Posted by magnusmelander
June 24, 2014
Mergers and acquisitions indicate rapidly growing markets ahead. Google made a 3.2B$ acquisition of Nest in January. Now they just followed on with an acquisition of the Wi-Fi surveillance camera maker Dropcam for 555M$. Thermostats, smoke alarms and cameras – what is Googles plan? I think it is the homes and maybe offices they are after. There are many thermostats, smoke alarms and smart cameras available but Nest and Dropcam definitely comes with a cool design which should at least bring home healthier margins. People love nice products! Google has always been interested in Wi-Fi and it’s not a wild bet that there will be Wi-Fi in homes and offices. But this can’t be enough, they must be going after a service model with recurring revenues and collecting data from these devices to store, manage, analyze and sell. I have always claimed that “data is the gold of M2M” and I am confident that Google shares that view.
Provided I’m right, I still questions that idea. Even if Google spend another couple of B$ to buy companies with cool things (Sonos could be a good target) they will never get market share over maybe 5-10% and scattered around. I understand that they could sell the information back to the users of these devices but that seems to be a difficult path to get the money back. And if they try to sell the data elsewhere I would believe the owners of the devices and policymakers would have a view on that. But Google knows all that. The recurring revenues are obviously attractive but it feels questionable to pay this much to get there.
On top of all I believe their will have to be at least three separate wireless networks in homes: an unmanaged Wi-Fi with good performance but only best effort services, a really secure fully managed network for security related applications like door locks, surveillance and medical monitoring, and maybe even a third managed low bandwidth network for connecting things like fridges, coffee machines, etc. And even worse, we will see a mix of WAN and LAN technologies being used as well. I simply don’t see how one can deliver sensible services like surveillance or smoke detection over an unmanaged best effort Wi-Fi network. Successful companies with such services like Verisure today typically manage their own network.
So I am probably wrong. Goggle sees something I don’t. And they also understand the down-side of connected hardware since Nest just had to recall 440.000 smoke alarms due to a potential risk that they didn’t alarm immediately. But I am happy for their acquisitions since it stimulates entrepreneurs, customers and other companies who consider playing a sincere role in building the Internet of Everything.
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Posted by magnusmelander
May 29, 2014
The Internet of Everything promises enormous potential and a lot of us are excited. I believe it is needed to save the planet, to provide the safety and security we want and to bring the efficiency needed to afford healthcare and other important things across the globe. The Internet of Everything will touch all of us and our pets. It will be in our homes, offices and cars and more or less everywhere else. It is one of the things that can help make our common future bright.
But in order to ensure that the Internet of Everything is created in a positive and reasonable way we need a lot of people involved. And by excluding women already from start we are shooting ourselves in the foot. I have been joking for years that M2M means men-to-men, but we’re now beyond the point where I can joke about it anymore. The last M2M conference I attended had only men presenting and just 2-3 women in the audience, like most of the others I have been to.
In my closing remarks I underlined the seriousness of this issue and asked everyone in the room to immediately start hire and promote women in their organizations. I believe that is the only way we can fix this embarrassing problem – taking personal responsibility in order to collectively move our industry forward. If we don’t we will collectively prevent rapid and prosperous growth in the Internet of Everything.
I attended a tech meet-up on wearable computing in Stockholm a couple of weeks ago. Wearable computing is definitely technology which will become very important onwards, both for consumers but even more so in wellness/healthcare. We were almost 100 excited people in the room listening to an interesting presentation by Narrative. I had a great feeling of being at the right place with the coolest people on earth. The ones who will bring our next wave of innovation, export and wealth. Interestingly enough we were people from all over the world in the room and almost half of us were women! That’s the future of Internet of Everything!
Find some great women, hire them, promote them! Now!
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Posted by magnusmelander
Gartner certainly got it right when they put IoT on the top of the hype curve. This many people have never been interested in what I am working with, not even when I worked with Wi-Fi. Last week for example, Stockholm Business Region, an agency promoting Stockholm, organized a breakfast meeting. But this one was about IoT and 150 people signed up within one hour! Since they had room for 80 persons in the venue they had to shut down the registration and find a bigger place. They ended up with the largest cinema in Stockholm, some 600 registered people, exhibitors in the entrance hall and a strong line-up of speakers.
connectcompute 