Based on the quarterly earnings report from many of the largest players in the IT space, it seems that one trend is obvious – the world is becoming more mobile than ever before.  IT companies who derive a significant portion of their revenue from things that are either mobile or accessed while mobile did well. Those who relied on revenue from stationary PCs did not.

There was a great article in Bloomberg which outlined this exact point.  The article points out how the traditional PC market is being hit, and how two giants (IBM and Microsoft) are not catching the wave to this new world as successfully as Google.  It really was bleak for the PC world, as PC shipments dropped by their biggest percentage in 2 decades. It also does not look like this trend is going to reverse, based upon forecasts from chip OEM and PC manufacturers.

It isn’t all bleak for shareholders of Big Blue, however, as the article points out how IBM is changing the nature of their business into markets such as mobile-phone security and Data Analysis.  This brings up the point of this blog....how important is Big Data to many companies and how does M2M help their shift towards higher-growth businesses?

There is no doubt every large IT player is ramping up their Big Data push....here are some of the items posted on 3 big player’s web pages:

IBM

• “Every day, we create 2.5 Quintillion bytes of data”
• “Big Data spans four dimensions: Volume, Velocity, Variety and Veracity”

SAP

• “Top drivers of Big Data include:  Analyzing operational data, tracking customer behavior, innovating service and improving productivity”

Oracle

• “Our solutions help you acquire Big Data, organize Big Data and analyze Big Data”

How does M2M fit into their planned growth of Big Data?

For Oracle and SAP, they face some similar growth pains, despite the differences in their business offerings:

• Both of these companies have tremendous reaches into Fortune 500 and large government entities.  However, it is becoming more difficult to find new customers in this space, so they are both looking to expand their market into the SMB space.
• As well, both companies are looking to find ways to offer more services into their existing customers.
• Finally, both companies are seeing tremendous competition from many cloud-based services, such as Salesforce.com, and are looking to find ways to offer more hosted services to their clients.

M2M solutions offer tremendous upside for these two companies:

• Easy entry into the SMB space  Many smaller companies have not considered using solutions from these two companies, as they never felt that the size of their company justified the initial investment (or that they would see a viable return on investment long-term).  However, many SMB customers have a considerable amount of remote assets, and a solution from one of these two companies could help simplify managing the data from them. 
• M2M solutions are ideal cloud-based offerings  For many companies, the sheer amount of data that is generated by thousands (or more) of devices in the field can overwhelm their current IT infrastructure.  As such, many M2M solutions are ideally hosted in the cloud, allowing the customers to get what information they need, and to be able to quickly look up data that is used less often.  This would fit very well into the sweet spot of what SAP/Oracle could offer.
• M2M data is used by all departments   When implemented properly, all departments in a company can use/benefit from M2M data.  This means that this data will be required to be dispersed to (and manipulated by) all sectors of the company, requiring a lot of integration and services.  This is a huge plus for Oracle/SAP, as it offers many opportunities for revenue gain from existing customers, specifically from areas of the company that they have not sold licenses/services to.

For IBM, the upside for M2M in Big Data is actually much bigger than the other two.  And, I don’t want to make it sound as if Big Blue hasn’t been active in this space.  Their web page shows them offering many different offerings for Big Data, including Data Analysis, Data Warehousing, Security intelligence services and Data optimization.  As well, IBM has ventured into a few key areas of M2M already, including Smart Grid.

Where IBM could differentiate itself in this M2M space includes:

• Thinking small with Big Data  Like SAP/Oracle, IBM hasn’t traditionally been as popular with smaller companies.  I don’t want to make it sound like they haven’t done any work here (their web page list a lot of services that may appeal to the SMB space), but I think that M2M solutions would be a great way for them to make even better headway into this growth area.  A complete offering (including IBM bundling in cellular airtime) would allow for a very effective solution for many smaller companies, and would further allow IBM to sell many cloud-based services to this marketplace.
• Make Big Data even bigger and better Right now, IBM manages a staggering amount of data, and even without M2M solutions, that number won’t be getting smaller anytime soon.  However, properly managed M2M solutions can not only create more data. More importantly, it can create data that is more useful than just about any other source.  This allows for much better decisions, greatly increasing the ROI for a Big Data solution from IBM.
• Increase your BYOD management capabilities  As we speak, many companies are well on their way to the move towards BYOD (Bring your own device), and IBM is doing a great job in helping customers manage these devices.  It won’t be very long before many of the BYOD platform providers venture into the world of M2M devices.  By converging the management of handsets and remote M2M devices onto a single platform, IBM will be able to greatly increase both the number of devices (and sell more licenses/servers) that it manages as well as provide many integration services between the two devices.  So, they could offer services such as the ability to reset/draw information from remote M2M devices on smartphones through their services, among many other services.

Bottom line

I doubt (at least I would hope) that this blog post is not revolutionary to the powers that be at these three companies.  Based on the number of advertisements for the “Internet of Everything”, our space is as hot as any.  I think that these companies need to accelerate their M2M efforts, which in turn will help them find new areas of growth – which is typically a challenge for companies of their size.

As always, let Novotech know how we can help with your M2M needs.  You can visit our web page @ www.novotech.com.  As well, feel free to reach out to me directly @ larry(@)novotech.com.  You can also follow us on Twitter (@NovotechM2M) and you can follow me personally (@LBNovotechM2M).