By the year 2010, the Internet will have trillions
of users it doesn’t have today.
Most of them will not be human
beings.
Let the Circle Be Unbroken: How the “Information
Circle” Created by Device Networking / M2M Will Automate the Global
Enterprise
[Editor’s note: The following is
only an extract from our most recent white paper. Download the entire
paper in PDF format by clicking here.]
A Digital Nervous System for Global
Business
The Internet has been a profound driving force on the path to a truly
connected world. Most people realized this the moment they sent their
first email or
saw their first Web site. Recall that America Online began as a completely
closed, proprietary system. When the Web arrived, AOL did not permit its
users to send or receive email from the
Internet at large, or to browse Web-based content. The company tried to maintain
this “island” status for quite a while, until it became apparent
that the sudden emergence of a global data network was so monumentally important
that survival demanded connectivity with it.
The entire tale of digital networking and its transformation of business
and society is told in that small anecdote from the history of AOL. The
early text-only Internet had been used for decades by the military and
most academic institutions, but with its rapidly deployed public infrastructure,
and then its graphical, mouse-driven Web interface, the Internet ushered
in the 21st century just a hair ahead of schedule—around 1995—and
the watchwords of the new age were clear: open standards, connectivity,
global information-sharing.
The excitement that greeted the Web’s arrival is the important
thing to remember about the dot-com era, not the greed that inflated the
famous bubble. Everyone knew instinctively that something truly epochal
had arrived. Despite the boom-and-bust—and the venture capital ghost-town
it left behind—the Internet has steadily continued to re-shape human
communication and transactions.
But that’s the point: human communication and transactions.
In the years since the “crash,” the Internet has attracted
many new users—including an entire generation of young people who
can’t remember a world without it—and the Web experience keeps
getting better and better. Yet we have essentially remained in the dot-com
era. Even now, most utilization of our glorious global data network is
initiated by, or directed at, human beings. The many much-publicized initiatives
to “deliver broadband content” to Web browsers, PDAs, and
mobile phones only continues this exclusively human-centric type of thinking.
Yes, we can make “data” show themselves directly to the human
senses in the form of text, pictures, sounds, and video, but that’s
a very small part of what can be done with open, global data processing
and sharing.
The Internet’s most profound potential lies in its ability to connect
trillions upon trillions of fast, smart sensors, devices, and ordinary
products into a global “digital nervous system” that has been
dreamed about by visionaries since at least the 1940s. It will completely
automate most enterprise functions, allowing every type of business to
achieve undreamed-of efficiency, optimization, and profitability.
Let the devices do the talking
On that “path to a truly connected world,” Web sites and email—history-making
and permanently useful though they are—were only the very first step.
The next step will be vastly more profound, and will be based upon what is
usually called “device networking” or “machine-to-machine” (M2M)
messaging.
It seems ludicrous today that AOL could have thought for a moment that
its users would remain satisfied to live on an electronic island, unconnected
to the larger networked world. It will soon seem equally ludicrous that
we once possessed countless smart devices whose intelligence was confined
to their own enclosures.
For decades, we have been steadily building electronic intelligence into
manufactured objects by means of sensors, controllers, and microprocessors.
Today, virtually all products that use electricity—from toys and
coffee makers to cars and medical diagnostics—possess inherent data-processing
capability.
It thus follows that virtually all electronic and electro-mechanical
products now contain a wealth of information about their status, usage,
and performance. This information can offer extraordinary business advantage
to the companies that manufacture and service those products, especially
in terms of customer relationships.
The transmission, harvesting and interpretation of this device-based
information as a basis for strategy and action will make every form
of business dramatically more efficient and profitable than ever before.
We call this phenomenon “The Pervasive Internet”—the
fusion of pervasive computing, Internet connectivity, and new enterprise-level
data-management applications and Web-based smart services.
We call its effect on commerce and the enterprise “Invisible Business.”
Device Growth & Scale Findings
Our analysis indicates that by the end of 2002, 9.5 million devices (excluding
PCs, phones, PDAs, any device under $50 in value, and some other consumer
information appliances) will be Internet-connected. This is a small fraction
of the entire relevant device population, but the number promises to grow
rapidly throughout the decade. By the end of 2010 over 500 million devices
worldwide will be networked annually, with a combined revenue potential
(enablement, monitoring, data analysis, and services) of over $700 billion.
[Editor’s note: The foregoing is only an extract
from our most recent white paper. Download the entire paper in PDF format
by clicking here.]
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