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MAIN PANEL
- Think Pervasive
Evolving Industry Structure of the Pervasive Internet.
- 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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M2M Expo and Conference
March 23-24, 2005, Dallas, TX
Harbor
Research proudly co-sponsors the second annual US M2M Expo and Conference in Dallas, TX, March 23-24, 2005.
 .Last year's inaugural Expos in Dallas and Brussels, Belgium crackled with pioneering energy. They were great events. But this one is going to be extraordinary.
Harbor is leading the development of the agenda and content for the Expo. We’re constructing an innovative format based around real-world case studies in which both suppliers and adopters can present their progress together as a team.
If you can attend one M2M-related event this year, this is it. We hope to see you there.
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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.
“Home Awareness: Delivering Value with Digital Convergence in the Home” (September,
2004)
HomeHeartbeat™, a new smart-home platform from Eaton, takes a refreshingly “pervasive” perspective on home technology, and underscores the importance of first-mover advantages in a networked world. PDF
format, 524 KB.
“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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Evolving Industry Structure of the Pervasive Internet
Hundreds of new players are pouring onto the Pervasive Internet / M2M field. But what game exactly are they planning to play? And what about all the old pros?
Download a printer-friendly PDF version of this essay (280 KB).
(See our terms of use.)
Learn about Harbor’s brand-new study of Pervasive Internet adoption, Connecting to Your Future: The Networking of Every Manufactured Thing. Download an overview of Connecting to Your Future (PDF, 328 KB).
Disruption vs. Chaos
Emerging technologies usually come from some inspired new union of science and design. So it’s ironic that they often enter the world in the most unscientific and undesigned manner imaginable—flying in on wings of pure hype and competitive one-upmanship.
| Pervasive Landscape |
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This map is meant to be illustrative, not exhaustive. Static snapshots like this cannot capture the endlessly changing “recombinant business DNA” of the Pervasive Internet. (Click the image to view a larger version in a new browser window.)
Source: Harbor Research, Inc.
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Such technologies are called “disruptive” for a good reason. But some of the chaos surrounding the arrival of the Pervasive Internet is unnecessary and impedes progress. It comes from trying to play an old game on a new playing field.
The incoherence and hype stems from the intense, high-stakes competition of high-tech innovation. But the historical basis of that competition lies in an old, non-connected world where the necessity of interoperability ended with the AC wall plug.
In a connected world, adopters and suppliers alike will need to think about competition, cooperation, and “landscape position” quite differently.
Enterprise History Starts a New Chapter
In the last 75-80 years or so, the history of the enterprise has gone through three basic chapters:
- Vertically integrated, self-sufficient monolithic companies.
- Hub and spoke “command and control” ecosystems with a “commander” at the center.
- Business “webs” of fluid, ever-changing relationships driven by connectivity and the real-time flow of device and business information.
We’re now ending Chapter 2 and beginning Chapter 3. It will be the chapter of “recombinant business DNA” in which everything will be in a constant state of re-configuration—the businesses themselves, the business models, the interactions between suppliers, adopters, and end-customers, and the modes of capital formation that will drive the delivery of new technology and solutions.
The landscape map that accompanies this essay only begins to suggest what that chapter will look like. It’s meant to be illustrative, not exhaustive: obviously, only a fraction of the possible players is portrayed. Everyone loves such maps, especially those who are included. In such a group portrait, everyone is most interested to see how good they look compared to everyone else, and that’s part of the problem.
Such maps are useful as far as they go. But they are static and two-dimensional, and thus inherently inadequate and misleading. The reality will be fluid and multidimensional—not something you can capture with a snapshot, but a “matrix” better served by an intricate 3D animation from a special-effects house.
Birth of a New Era
Internet connectivity is a major disruptor in all economic spaces, and the rapid evolution and interplay among the major supplier groups is initiating a new era—the Pervasive Internet era—that will be driven by an entirely different set of business models and related relationships than those of the client-server and dot-com eras.
The killer apps of the Pervasive Internet era—equipment monitoring, predictive maintenance, asset management, and other “Web Services”—will be intensely dependent upon business ecosystems that are both as robust and as nimble as a mesh network itself.
The competitive structure of the PC-centric world was built upon product-centric P&Ls and comparatively few major alliances. By contrast, the Pervasive Internet will be driven by solution services and will flourish in a vast, fluid web of alliances.
Hundreds of New Players Are Rushing onto the Field for a Game of…What?
By our count, there are now many more than 200 credible start-ups addressing one aspect or another of Pervasive Internet enablement, with at least one new start-up entering the supplier landscape every week.
On the one hand, this is a welcome sign of vitality. For years now, Harbor Research has steadily predicted an explosion of M2M activity by the middle of this decade, and that prediction is unquestionably coming true today.
On the other hand, it’s a perplexing spectacle. They’re all so small, and their interests are so similar, that one wonders how they see themselves relative to each other, and relative to the giants of the IT industry.
Here we have these hundreds of young new players rushing onto the field all at once for a game of…what? Entrepreneurial free-for-all? If you read their PR, you discover an amazing fact: every single one of them is “the world leader” at what they do. And they all do very similar things.
That’s going to make teamwork tough.
Meanwhile, the venerable older pros of the IT League, the living legends with names like HP, Cisco, Oracle, SAP, et al., are mostly standing on the sidelines and not playing at all, when they could be putting a real game together.
A Plethora of Questions
The leadership vacuum leaves us with a plethora of vexing questions.
How are all these participants going to play together? How will industry structure and Pervasive Internet competition evolve? How will the many emergent start-up players juxtapose themselves against each other, and against the giants of IT?
Are we doomed to “Balkanization”—a vast sea of fragmented behavior—or is industry coherence possible?
The revolutionary shift to M2M technologies is upon us, yet the outline of the future industry structure is a thumbnail sketch at best. The relationships and solution initiatives that will really drive this space have not materialized.
Yes, there have been many scattered local maneuvers. But we have not seen the systematic, big-vision moves required to bring a new era into being. All the major constituents in this arena—technology suppliers, value adders (OEMs, SIs, incorporators, etc.), and the real-world adopters—are moving haphazardly.
The Arms Merchants Prospered in Their World, Not the Real World
The old pros of IT—the “arms merchants” as we sometimes call them—do in fact provide essential pervasive and M2M enabling and components—especially Web Services technologies and the “always on” (and secure) Internet itself. But they have long been cloistered in a B2B universe based on the old batch computing model, not on a model of real-time device inputs.
For this reason, they have historically had the role of enterprise plumbers blissfully free of the need to connect their technology and services to the real world at large. For many years, they have lived and prospered at the center of their own universes. The world beat a path to their doors, and took what they had to give. It should go without saying that this era is coming to a close. Yet we see little indication that the big names are rousing themselves to lead us into a connected world.
There are certainly some exceptions—for example, IBM’s new business unit focused on sensors and RF devices, and Intel’s many investments—but they are quite scattered and don’t really yield a pattern of emerging industry structure.
The Start-Ups Can’t Do It Alone
The start-ups can’t do it alone. To be sure, focused technology and application solutions companies truly appreciate the importance of Internet connectivity, but their vision tends to be very focused—limited to the needs of their own very vertical worlds or technology disciplines. Even more than the arms merchants, they tend to occupy the center of their own universes.
If the major players don’t see the implications of this soon, a new category of company—or federation of companies—may emerge to fill the crucial role of Pervasive Architect.
Download a printer-friendly PDF version of this essay (280 KB).
(See our terms of use.)
Learn about Harbor’s brand-new study of Pervasive Internet adoption, Connecting to Your Future: The Networking of Every Manufactured Thing. Download an overview of Connecting to Your Future (PDF, 328 KB).
Harbor Research welcomes your feedback. Send it to feedback@harborresearch.com.
Visit the “Currents” archive on the Web at:
http://harborresearch.com/currents/.
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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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