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MAIN PANEL
- Think Pervasive
Unleashing a Tidal Wave of Pent-Up Innovation.
- About Harbor
Who we are and what we offer.
- SmartSphere® “Living Business Intelligence”™
Harbor’s innovative online service is a totally new kind of research experience. It supports almost any type of project. Our earlier Pervasive Internet Report, for example, has been replaced and enhanced by our SmartSphere® “Pervasive Internet Suppliers” project.
SIDE PANEL
All issues of Harbor “Currents” are archived
on the Web.
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| Technology
suppliers: We want you in our Knowledge Base
If your company has anything to do with Internet-enabled devices or
M2M (from sensors to services), we want your full profile in the Knowledge
Base that drives our online SmartSphere® projects on M2M and the Pervasive Internet (PDF, 224 KB). In addition to
our regular subscribers,
nearly
700 business and high-tech
journalists
have
full
access to
this ever-growing relational database of companies, products and events.
There is no cost to your company, but we do need
your help. Please download
our company profiling form—a Microsoft
Word document with fields
that you can easily fill out on screen. Complete the form
and email it to us to start the process. We’ll follow
up for additional information, if needed. When complete, we’ll
send you an attractive PDF file of your profile that you can use
for
your own
purposes.
Of course, your PDF-based profile will be a static
document. But users of our online SmartSphere® projects will see your company and
its
information dynamically—as part of graphical sector and venue
maps, and in auto-generated links to other records in the database,
such as other companies and ongoing events related to you and your
products or services. |
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Suppliers and Adopters: We want your Press Releases
If your company emails press releases about Pervasive-related events, put
us on your list at pr@harborresearch.com.
We’ll include your announcements in the events-tracking of our SmartSphere® projects, linked to a databased profile of your
organization. (You can help us create a good profile by filling out our company
profiling form.)
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| We welcome distribution of our PDF-format white papers, diagrams, and “Currents” essays under the following conditions:
- Whether in digital or printed form, all PDFs must be used exactly as supplied, without modification, and with the Harbor logo and contact information intact.
- If a Harbor PDF file is made available on your Web site, your link to the file must include attribution to Harbor Research, Inc., and this attribution must be linked to harborresearch.com. In addition, please notify us that you are posting the file.
- If you quote from any piece of Harbor writing, or refer to the information in any Harbor diagram, you must credit Harbor Research, Inc. with a link to harborresearch.com.
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Our free white papers reflect both our
research activities and our consulting.
“Think
Smart, Think Connected: Maintaining
Competitive Advantage in an Open, Connected Landscape” (August,
2003)
EU Corporate Leaders Meet in Paris to Discuss
New Business Opportunities of a Connected World. PDF
format, 220 KB.
“Let the Circle Be Unbroken: How Device Networking
/ M2M and the Internet Will Automate the Global Enterprise” (July,
2003)
Direct and easy to understand, this paper is an excellent introduction
to the Pervasive Internet and the many ways in which wired and wireless
device communication will completely automate global business. PDF
format, 392 KB.
“Core Network Providers:
Can They Escape the Commoditization Spiral?” (June 2003)
Today, core connectivity providers are in a declining-profit commodity
business and suffocating under mountains of dot-com build-out debt.
Meanwhile, a vast source of future growth
and revenue—device
networking / M2M—lies just outside their human-centric
blinders, along with the chance to adopt a truly 21st century business
model: that of the enterprise-automation “infotributor.” PDF
format, 740 KB.
“The ‘Always On’ Pervasive
Internet: Why Broadband Means More Than Bits” (January,
2002)
The buzz about broadband always emphasizes bandwidth and human-centric
applications such as video-on-demand or voice-over-IP. But for the
device-centric Pervasive Internet, broadband’s virtue is not its
bandwidth but the fact that it’s “always
on.” PDF
format, 180 KB.
“Catalytic Strategy:
Hasten Change, Shape Your Industry” (January, 2002)
In chemistry, a catalyst is an agent that speeds up the reaction
that produces a desired compound.
In high-tech business, the relentless rapid
change can be unnerving, but trying to
resist it
will only
get
you
hurt.
In fact,
it’s
often
a good idea to speed it up—and then use the resulting
disruption and momentum to your advantage. To do so, find a way
to become a catalyst yourself, or find a business ally to be a
catalyst for you. PDF format,
180 KB.
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Our popular Pervasive Internet diagrams are
vector-based PDF files that look great at any screen size or printer
resolution.
Pervasive Internet Venue
Map
Now you can see the entire Pervasive Internet laid out on a
single page—segmented
by market, service opportunities, and example devices.
Click
here to download our Pervasive Internet Venue Map.
Device Networking Hierarchy
Some Internet-connected devices are mobile, others are stationary. Some,
like PDAs and mobile phones, deliver full value only when given complete
human attention. “Pure” Pervasive Internet devices get no direct
human attention at all.
In this diagram, we place devices along the
“human-centric” / “device-centric” continuum,
give examples of each type, and suggest deployment figures for 2005.
Click
here to download our Device Networking Hierarchy diagram.
M2M Market Landscape
Distribution of Pervasive Internet / M2M players in terms of product / services mix and scope of solution, circa March 2004. This diagram is not intended to portray every active player, nor is it etched in stone. Company position is constantly evolving.
Click
here to download the M2M Market Landscape PDF (125 KB) .
SIGNALSmart™
Technology Framework
The Pervasive Internet begins with data generated by intelligent
devices. It ends with the smart Web services that
automate and optimize manufacturing, marketing, business logistics,
supply chain, and customer service. In between, many complex,
interoperable technologies must come into play.
We created our SIGNALSmart™ Framework
to provide a clear portrait of this technology path, along with
terminology and examples for suppliers
and adopters alike.
Click
here to download our 2-page SIGNALSmart™ Framework diagram (PDF,
368 KB).
M2M Ecosystems
Potential M2M adopters are looking for a bridge across the chasm between technology innovation and real-world business value. Only full supplier ecosystems can build that bridge. This diagram uses Harbor’s SIGNALSmart™ framework to show what’s needed, and what adopters do—and do not—care about.
Click
here to download the M2M Ecosystems PDF (70 KB) .
The “Device ISP” Opportunity
Major connectivity providers have made some device-centric strides, but we’re still living in “The Telephone Age.” A huge M2M / Pervasive Internet opportunity exists for those who “own the wire” or control a piece of wireless spectrum.
Click
here to download the Device ISP PDF (400 KB).
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Our title means many
things
Invisible forces running through water. Electricity running through wires.
The many wireless signals in the air all around us. And all the things (“current
events”) that are happening right now.
“Currents” was also the title of a publication series we
did some years ago. There was no Web when we started it. Very few of
our subscribers even had email. Today we have better ways to share our
thoughts and news. But in casting about for a newsletter title, nothing
sounded better than our own legacy, so “Currents” is back.
And there’s one other reason: Mark Twain.
The passenger who could not read it was charmed with a peculiar
sort of faint dimple on [the river’s] surface, but to the pilot
that was an italicized passage ... for it meant that a wreck or rock
was buried there that could tear the life out of the strongest vessel
that ever floated. In truth, the passengers who could not read this
book saw nothing but pretty pictures in it, whereas to the trained
eye these were not pictures at all, but the most earnest of reading
matter.
—Life on the Mississippi
Anyone can see the ripples on the surface of the water. The expert
eye reads the currents beneath.
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Unleashing a Tidal Wave of Pent-Up Innovation
For decades, core intellectual property in sensing, control, and communications has remained largely trapped in niche origins like aerospace, industrial automation, and on-board vehicle systems. The Pervasive Internet is accelerating the availability of this legacy innovation across all markets.
Download this essay in printable PDF format (380 KB).
(See our terms of use.)
| Figure 1: Pervasive Internet Technologies Drive Horizontal Applications... |
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(Click the image for a larger on-screen version.)
Source: Harbor Research, Inc.
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Download a printable PDF of the above diagram (100 KB).
(See our terms of use.)
Investors: Beware of Seeing M2M through Old IT Lenses
Lately, we’ve had quite a few discussions with venture capitalists and private equity investors about the opportunities ahead for M2M, pervasive computing, and wireless sensor networking. The enthusiasm for these subjects is clearly growing in the investment community. But investors also exhibit lingering confusion and reticence about these enormous emerging opportunities. We believe their concerns stem from outmoded IT thinking.
The question that best typifies investor skepticism goes something like this: “Will the integration and application opportunities in the pervasive and wireless sensor space really scale up, or are these opportunities trapped in the tyranny of vertical applications and industries requiring hopeless amounts of specialization and case-by-case complexity?”
The Interpenetration of Horizontal and Vertical
First of all, we think it’s misleading to frame the question in terms of “horizontal vs. vertical.” In a genuinely connected world, those two traditional axes will feed each other reciprocally in ways not seen in a world of isolated devices and business systems without real-time inputs.
The Pervasive Internet presents huge opportunities for turning vertical-specific functionality into a generalized horizontal tool or set of apps—much greater opportunities than, for example, ERP represents today.
ERP: Enterprise Automation Gets Halfway There
ERP essentially automates the general ledger, but it does not change the fundamental information flow of business. Today, the automation of ERP offers much less value than it might, because it remains trapped in the “batched” or “historical” computing model of yesterday. In this model, inputs from the past are collected and processed to tell you what happened—not what’s happening.
In a connected world of networked devices, enterprise systems become authentically automated by virtue of real-time inputs. Without the pervasive computing component, the gains of enterprise automation are comparatively small.
| Figure 2: ...Creating New Cross-Market Opportunities for Technology Suppliers |
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(Click the image for a larger on-screen version.)
Source: Harbor Research, Inc.
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Download a printable PDF of the above diagram (192 KB).
(See our terms of use.)
Decades of Underutilized Knowledge
Even more important, but less visible to the untrained eye, is the potential for most M2M technologies (sensors, processors, power electronics, etc.) to reach a point of discontinuity and scale up considerably—and rapidly.
Why is this? Many of the most relevant and promising technologies have sprouted in quite discrete spaces, and have not yet migrated across the economic landscape. To date, they have been utilized in fairly narrow applications such as defense systems, factory systems, and on-board vehicle systems. It would not be an overstatement to say that, for decades now, specialized innovation has been largely unable to move out of its niche origins. The era of the Pervasive Internet will unleash it.
At the level of sensing, control and algorithms, and the ability to build smart systems, there is a vast amount of accumulated knowledge and technology that has only just begun to migrate. Much sensing innovation first appeared commercially in vehicles because the volumes were so large. Now that it is more mature and less expensive, it is beginning to be seen in residential and personal applications. Similarly, sensing and monitoring technologies driven by the demands of factory automation have now begun to facilitate systems automation in commercial buildings.
Still, M2M technology migration has been partial and slow, largely due to the absence of key enabling factors—chief among them a global data network (the Internet), device-oriented wireless standards (ZigBee, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi), and intelligent device management systems (from a growing variety of vendors)—that now exist.
Networking Changes—and Accelerates—Everything
As the adoption of pervasive computing and M2M takes hold, excellent but narrowly applied (and thus slowly developing) technologies will feel the pressure required to become fully mature and generalized, and these technologies will quickly migrate to many other broader applications. We predict that when this occurs, it will fuel a discontinuity that will lead to untold growth and scale. Ultimately, this growth will feed all the information-systems applications that investors fear will not scale to the size and with the speed necessary to justify investment.
In other words, networking changes everything. Investors will be greatly mistaken if they bring the IT thinking of the “batched” computing era to a networked world. Such thinking fails to match the realities of a world outfitted with billions of smart, connected devices—the world of the real-time enterprise.
We certainly are not suggesting that the device networking and smart services opportunities come without risk. The various verticals do have their specific requirements, and these will need to be addressed. But the M2M / Pervasive Internet phenomenon will greatly accelerate everything, including our understanding of the business problems and the best ways to resolve them.
What we are suggesting is that the advantages of moving forward now clearly outweigh the risks of “standing pat.”
Download this essay in printable PDF format (380 KB).
(See our terms of use.)
Harbor Research welcomes your feedback. Send it to feedback@harborresearch.com.
Visit the “Currents” archive on the Web at:
http://harborresearch.com/currents/.
Subscribe to “Currents” at:
http://harborresearch.com/subscribe/
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Who We Are and What We Offer
New! Harbor Pervasive Internet Briefing Service
First, a few words about our latest offering, which is a unique and efficient way to harness the resources of Harbor Research: The Pervasive Internet Briefing Service. This annual package delivers outstanding business intelligence value by combining all points of contact to Harbor:
- Quarterly in-person briefings on subjects of your choosing
- All Harbor publications for a year
- Department- or business unit-wide access to Harbor SmartSphere® online tracking projects
- Phone and email access to analysts
Download a brochure on the Pervasive Internet Briefing Service (PDF, 500 KB).
Founded in 1983, Harbor Research Inc. has more than twenty years of experience in providing strategic consulting and research services that enable our clients to understand and capitalize on emergent and disruptive opportunities in high technology, Harbor Research’s clients are leaders in communications, computing, control, and content. Harbor Research has built extended relationships with larger multi-line companies including AT&T, ABB, General Electric, Danaher, Eaton, Emerson, Hewlett Packard, Honeywell, Hughes, IBM, Intel, Invensys, Lucent, Motorola, Rockwell, Siemens, and Texas Instruments, as well as with growth companies such as EMC, Cadence Design, Conexant, Qualcomm, and PTC.
We also work with a broad array of emergent start-ups and pre-IPO technology ventures. We have built relationships with a number of significant Pervasive Internet players, including Questra Corporation, Xsilogy, DataSweep, eDevice, Wireless Innovation, and emWare, to name a few.
We provide studies, workshops, briefings, research retainers, and consulting engagements of uniquely high value to both technology suppliers and adopters. For more information, please contact us.
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Your secret weapon has arrived. Announcing a totally new kind of business research experience.
Harbor’s new online platform for research services offers continually updated intelligence and stunning data-visualization.
Static, printed reports can’t track the complex ecosystems and warp-speed pace of high tech. SmartSphere® projects can.
The brains of the Web. The brawn of server databases. The beauty of a CD-ROM.
For nearly ten years, we’ve been waiting for Web media to get good enough to let us do this. It’s finally here. Harbor SmartSphere® re-invents the whole concept of delivering research value. It’s to business research what the Pervasive Internet will be to business itself: a huge injection of dynamic intelligence and sheer voltage. SmartSphere® is online, interactive, dynamic, and visualized. There’s nothing static, rigid, or dead about it. Eventually, we at Harbor will do everything in SmartSphere® that we used to do on paper, and we’ll do it better. And you can, too. in a custom-configured project of your own, SmartSphere® can be anything you want it to be.
And yes, you can get printed reports. We’ve re-invented those, too. Not fixed, one-size-fits-all printed reports, but custom printed reports that you configure and SmartSphere® creates for you on the fly in PDF format.
See SmartSphere® and find out more right now:
- Visit our free, live SmartSphere® demonstration. They say pictures are worth a thousand words. So what are they worth if they’re pictures of your whole world, and you can fly around inside the pictures with your mouse?
- Download a brochure on the SmartSphere® research platform and services (PDF, 970 KB).
- Download a brochure about our SmartSphere® “living research” projects on the M2M/Pervasive Internet phenomenon (PDF, 240 KB).
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A small portion of an interactive Harbor SphereMap™. This one portrays a company’s world. You “fly around” the map by dragging it with your mouse, bringing into focus any area you want to explore. You see a company’s peers, investors, products, and alliance-structure at a glance.
Clicking nodes fetches additional information from the database. Shift-clicking nodes creates new maps of other companies—and maps of markets, too.
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Projects, projects, projects. Ours, and yours.
SmartSphere® is an online platform that Harbor uses to deliver Web-based services. You don’t buy SmartSphere® the way you buy
a program for your computer. You buy access to one or more SmartSphere® projects. We define projects of our own on important high-tech subjects, and clients can subscribe to those projects. Clients can also define their own custom (and completely private) projects.
SmartSphere® projects are laser-focused on their subjects. No waste, no fluff, no irrelevance. A SmartSphere® project delivers continually updated information on whatever the project has been defined to track. Some of that information is created in the good old-fashioned way, by experienced researchers and analysts. And some of it is created with 21st century tools like automated news feeds and Web-based info services. Every time you log in to a project, there’s new information—freshly tracked events, new company alliances, new company and market comparisons, enhanced company, market, and technology profiles, and insightful Harbor commentary and analysis.
When you visit our SmartSphere® demonstration, you’ll see a limited version of our own “Pervasive Internet Suppliers” project. Bear in mind that the free demo offers limited information and functionality. The full “Pervasive Internet Suppliers” project, for example, was created to replace and improve our own earlier online publication, Pervasive Internet Report.
Custom SmartSphere® projects. Your secret weapon has arrived.
You’ve heard about some of our SmartSphere® projects. Now let’s talk about yours. Does your company have business development, M&A, R&D, or sales and marketing goals? We hope the answer is yes. How would you like “living business intelligence”™ on the companies that interest or worry you? Or on the markets and technologies that are defining your future? A custom SmartSphere® project is the perfect way to do that. “Living business intelligence”™ means research that is laser-focused on your targets, and continually updated for as long as you need it.
Any collection of companies, markets, or technologies can become the backbone of a SmartSphere® project. You define who or what they are. You define what you want to track about them, and how you’d like to rank or score or weight them. You define the types of cross-company or cross-market comparisons you’d like to see.
You need Flash to use Harbor’s site and our SmartSphereŽ demos. It’s free and easy. Get it here.Take action and take control.
If you’ve read this much about SmartSphere® without clicking something, it’s time to click. Here are those links once again.
- Visit our free, live SmartSphere® demonstration.
- Download a brochure on the SmartSphere® research platform and services (PDF, 970 KB).
- Download a brochure about our SmartSphere® “living research” projects on the M2M/Pervasive Internet phenomenon (PDF, 240 KB).
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