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).