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MAIN PANEL
- Think Pervasive
“Pawns Are Important, But They’re Not the Game”:
A “wireless strategy” isn’t a strategy at all.
- Pervasive Events
A roundup of recent events from the Pervasive
Internet Report Knowledge Base.
SIDE PANEL
All issues of Harbor “Currents” are archived
on the Web.
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“The
Pervasive Internet Opportunity”
Our brand-new study of Internet device networking and M2M is the first assessment
of the phenomenon from the adopter perspective.
Based on survey or direct interview response
from over 700 executives and technologists, the study quantifies
adoption patterns in eight
vertical market-venues, costs for adoption, and outlook
for ROI. It also examines indicators for adoption, and the business
models and alliances arising from the developing "infosphere" of
device data.
A PDF brochure describing the study in detail
may be downloaded
here.
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The new issue includes:
Feature
“ZigBee™: ‘Invisible Business’ Gets a Wireless Device
Networking Standard”
Full company profiles
• Digi
• Eka Systems
• Engage Networks
And more
Categorized events listings (see our Events Roundup, below, for a sample),
venue profiles, and numerous internal links to our database records on
companies,
products,
and events.
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Simple, with some sizzle
Our brand-new Web site is
extremely simple to use. You’ll find brief, straightforward information
about all aspects of the company, and fast access to all our freely downloadable
white papers and brochures.
It’s also fun and easy on the eye. The navigation, for example,
is an interactive, animated map of the entire site structure. You can’t
get lost. Please have
a look.
The new site requires Macromedia’s
Flash 6 browser plug-in. Flash is the undisputed winner in the
race for high-quality Web interactivity and rich-media enterprise
application development. The plug-in is free and easy to install.
If you don’t already have it, get it by clicking this button:
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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.”
EU Corporate Leaders Meet in Paris to Discuss
New Business Opportunities of a Connected World.
This is the full version of the paper excerpted
in this issue of “Currents.” 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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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 Pervasive
Internet Report. 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 fax 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 Pervasive Internet Report online
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 companies and ongoing events related to you and your products
or services. |
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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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A “wireless strategy” isn’t a strategy
at all
“Pawns Are Important,
But They're
Not the Game”
Wireless is a Tool, Not a Strategy
We’re hearing a lot these days about the need for companies to adopt
a “wireless strategy” or a “mobile strategy.” And
frankly, we’re concerned. We don’t think it’s great
advice. The phrase “wireless strategy” sounds an awful lot
like the myopic, short-range, “buzz-word of the moment” thinking
that gets businesses into trouble all the time.
But wait—don’t
get us wrong. We love wireless. Around the Harbor offices,
nobody has plugged an Ethernet cable into a
laptop for almost four years now. We’ve got analysts lounging
on sofas with their computers, connected to the Internet and getting
real
work done. They wander out to the deck and continue working, surrounded
by flowering vines. These are some happy analysts.
We want more wireless.
We’d like to stop plugging wires into our digital cameras, too.
How about uploading the pictures to a server from out in the field?
We’d
like to control our security system with our mobile phones. We’d
like to call the house from the movie theater to see if we left the
oven turned on. And if we did leave the oven turned on, we’d
like to turn it off.
Wireless? Bring it on. We can’t get enough
wireless.
But
wireless is not a “strategy.” It’s a tool for
connecting things that aren’t fixed in place. On the great chessboard
of digital-era business, it’s an important piece to be sure, and
should be played where it’s needed. But it’s not the game. Would
a contractor adopt a “hammer strategy”? Would he tackle
your kitchen renovation with a “table-saw strategy”?
If
we, as high-tech business advisors, suggested that your company
adopt a “twisted-pair strategy,” we would not expect
to hear from you again. And yet twisted-pair remains a big part
of our communications
infrastructure. To this day, a lot of valuable business information,
from both people and machines, still travels through that old
technology, at
one point or another.
It’s simply a mistake to adopt any
technology in business without thinking hard about where the whole
game is going.
Today, companies need
a big-picture view of what is about to happen to business
in the 21st century. And what’s about to happen is this: We’re
finally entering the Information Age—the real one. And
because of that, we’re entering the great Automation
Age. Not automation as in robots building cars on the factory
floor—an old story,
and a very good one, with lots of lessons to teach—but
rather automation as in automation of the supply chain, automation
of
the healthcare-information chain, automation
of sales and marketing and customer relationships, from cradle
to grave.
In short, automation of the enterprise.
The MRI Machine Isn’t
Going Anywhere, But Its Pictures Are
Every business venue offers numerous examples, but let’s talk
about healthcare.
Until they come up with an MRI machine so small and
light
that it won’t
crush your bones if it rolls over your foot, we don’t
want MRI machines moving around too much. Those things
could hurt you. Let them stay where
they are. Bolt them to the floor, in fact. We would, however,
like the MRI’s information to move around. For
starters, we’d like its digital scans to be instantly
stored in the diagnostic facility’s enterprise system.
For that to happen, the MRI machine needs to be a networked
device, connected and sending
data. Since it’s bolted to the floor, we won’t
be needing a “wireless strategy” for that.
Coax, Ethernet, or any other high-bandwidth wire will
do just fine.
Along with the MRI scans, we want all the
patient’s data from every
other diagnostic device, large and small, and all the
input from the human medical personnel who have worked
with the patient. Those data will get
in and out of their respective systems via wires or not,
depending upon what is needed. The EKG machine could go
either way. The little digital
thermometer in the patient’s mouth will be wireless
for sure, probably a Bluetooth- or ZigBee-enabled device.
The devices will talk to each other,
too, and eventually control each other. For example, the
digital thermometer might trigger the release of fever-reducing
medicine in
the patient’s
IV, if appropriate.
When a doctor wants to access patient
data, she will do so wirelessly if she’s using a
PDA while roaming the wards, or via wires if she’s
using a desktop computer in her office. You see the
point. It really doesn’t
matter whether the bits fly through wires or through
the air, as long as the best techniques are used in
each case.
Further, we want all data from all healthcare
facilities to be accessible via a global data network,
just the
way Web
servers are. (In fact, they will be Web servers.) That
way, doctors in Germany, China, and South Africa could all look at
the same MRI scans simultaneously and collaborate on
a diagnosis, if necessary. The scans could be analyzed
with
artificial
intelligence techniques, as
satellite photos are—subjected to sophisticated
pattern-recognition, or perhaps compared to databased
scans from similar cases.
Now, this is starting to sound
like a strategy: real-time access to all healthcare
information related to a specific
patient,
from anywhere,
by
anyone or anything that could contribute to a better
level of service to the patient-customer, thereby optimizing
the systems
and businesses
involved, and creating new sources of revenue and growth
for the organizations in the business of providing care.
And
so, if you were thinking of adopting a “wireless
strategy,” don’t.
Think bigger. Make wireless a pawn in your much grander “enterprise
automation” strategy.
That’s a free piece
of business advice that isn’t “buzz-word
of the moment.”
“Buzz-word of the century,” maybe, but we can
live with that. Guilty as charged.
We’ll have much more to say
about this and related subjects in future issues of “Currents.” Stay
tuned.
Copyright ©2003, Harbor Research,
Inc. All rights reserved.
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A selection of recent events from the Pervasive
Internet Report Knowledge Base
HP Buys .Net Developer Extreme Logic
Atlanta, GA, August 13, 2003 — Hewlett-Packard Co. is buying
Extreme Logic Inc., a move that HP officials said will extend the
.Net capabilities of its
services
group. Extreme Logic helps businesses deploy solutions based on Microsoft’s
.Net platform, an area that Livermore said “is going
to be a very, very critical area of expertise for us.” It also adds
an important aspect to HP's Adaptive Enterprise strategy, according
to HP officials. Web services will play a key role for businesses
looking to make their IT infrastructure more flexible, they said.
Extreme Logic focuses on several verticals, including financial services,
health care and retail. HP officials also said that the company will
add such features as e-learning and security to vertical markets for
HP, and will expand the company's presence in the South and East.
PDSHeart Acquires Navix Diagnostix Cardiac Division
Atlanta, Georgia, August 13, 2003 — PDSHeart®, LLC, a
national leader in the delivery of cardiac telemedicine, today announced
the acquisition of the cardiac event monitoring business of Navix
Diagnostix, Inc. of Taunton, Mass. The purchase, PDSHeart's second
in the past five weeks, expands the company's business in the northeast,
mid-west and Texas, as well as other parts of the country, continuing
its strategy of growth through key market acquisitions. PDSHeart
acquired Physicians' CardioTrace, Inc., of Cincinnati, Ohio, in
July.
Safety-Kleen Chooses Intermec for Software, Mobile Computers
August
12, 2003 — Intermec Technologies Corp. has been selected by Safety-Kleen
Corp. of Plano, Texas, a leading nationwide provider of industrial
waste
management and environmental services, to automate its route sales
and service operations. After successful pilot projects at eight of
its sites, Safety-Kleen is deploying Intermec’s ArciTech work
order management software, Model 720 handheld mobile computers, and
PW40 workboard printers with integrated credit card readers to all
of its mobile customer service representatives. EDS is providing user
training and integration between the mobile operations and Safety-Kleen’s
enterprise applications.
Texas Instruments Announces RFID
Tag for Textiles Dallas,
Texas, August 11, 2003 — Texas Instruments
Radio Frequency Identification (TI-RFid(TM)) Systems, a worldwide
leader
in radio
frequency identification (RFID) systems, today announced its new 13.56
MHz RFID tag for textile rental and dry cleaning applications. The
ultra-thin, 22 mm circular transponder, housed in plastic, is fully
compatible with the ISO 15693 standard and has been designed and tested
to withstand the harsh industrial cleaning process. Sewn into or attached
to textile items, TI-RFid tags provide more accurate identification
and greater accountability as well as improve handling through each
stage of cleaning and processing to final customer delivery.
Alpine Releases New In-Vehicle Navigation System
Torrance,
California, August 5, 2003 — Alpine Electronics, the world leader
in mobile navigation, today announced that it is shipping a new in-vehicle
navigation package (NAV-200) that pairs its award-winning NVE-N852A
DVD-based PowerNav(TM) system with a high-resolution 5.8-inch widescreen
monitor for $2,000. Alpine's PowerNav system includes all new Smart
Map Pro Version 2.0 DVD-ROM software, delivering full map coverage
of the Continental U.S. and parts of Canada. The Version 2.0 software
features the industry's largest information directory with more than
11 million Points of Interest(POIs), and exclusive new content from
Zenrin's Interstate Exit Information.
ATX Acquires German-Based Telematics Provider
Dusseldorf, Germany, August 4, 2003 — ATX, the leading
independent telematics service provider to the automotive industry
in North
America, announced today it has acquired Vodafone PASSO, GmbH, the
telematics service provider owned by European wireless carrier,
Vodafone.
Hughes Tops 12 Million in Set-Top
Box Receivers Germantown,
Maryland, August 4, 2003 — Hughes Network Systems (HNS),
Inc., the world’s leading provider of broadband satellite network
solutions
and a leading manufacturer of satellite television receivers, announced
today that it has shipped 12 million DIRECTV(R) satellite receivers
since it began production in 1996.
2Q 2003 Handset Shipments Increased More Than 19%
Framingham,
Massachusetts, July 31, 2003 — The worldwide market
for handsets took off in the second quarter of 2003, reflecting
continued consumer demand for mobile telephony. According to IDC's Worldwide Handset
QView, worldwide handset shipments grew by 19.2% year-over-year
in 2Q03 and increased sequentially by 6.7% to 118.3 million units.
Nokia maintained its top position in the market while Sony Ericsson
regained the number 5 spot from LG Electronics.
PERFECTV and On2 Technologies Form Alliance
Southern Pines, N.C., and New York, July 30, 2003 — PERFECTV, a division
of Gatelinx Corporation and a global leader in providing video on
demand (VOD) solutions, has formed an alliance
with On2 Technologies, Inc. (Amex: ONT). The integration of PERFECTV's
Video On Demand (VOD) systems and the ON2 VP6 Codec will provide customers
with cost-effective, on demand DVD-quality video directly to their
TV set.
Provia Introduces RFID-Enabled Supply Chain Execution
Grand
Rapids, Michigan, July 28, 2003 — Provia Software, a leading
provider of order-to-delivery supply chain execution software solutions,
announced full Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) support for the
company’s ViaWare WMS (Warehouse Management System), the core
component of Provia’s ViaWare supply chain execution suite.
Etenna's Antenna a Critical Bluetooth Component
Laurel, Maryland, July 23, 2003 — Etenna Corporation, an
antenna developer for commercial wireless applications, today announced
that
its EA2400 AccuWave™ antenna is an integral part of the new USB
Bluetooth(TM) Adaptor from Actiontec Electronics. Actiontec Electronics
is a leading supplier of analog and broadband devices designed to
facilitate or leverage Internet access.
Motorola 32-bit Embedded Processor Tackles Multiple
Tasks
Austin, Texas, July 22, 2003 — The new MPC5200
from Motorola, Inc.'s (NYSE: MOT) Semiconductor Products Sector combines
low power, high performance and a broad range of input/output (I/O)
in a single, cost-effective package. This 32-bit embedded processor
makes the elimination of multiple processors in designs possible,
and provides ample headroom for product upgrades and differentiation.
Honeywell to Develop Software
for Combat Systems Phoenix,
Arizona, July 24, 2003 — Honeywell (NYSE: HON) today announced it
is has been
selected by Boeing Co. and Science Applications International Corp.
to develop integrated software for the United States Army’s
Future Combat Systems (FCS) program.
American Express Expands New “Contactless” Payment
Product
New York, NY, July 16, 2003 — American Express Company
today announced the pilot expansion — in the greater Phoenix
area — of its latest payment product, ExpressPay from American
Express. ExpressPay is a fee-free, key fob (key chain attachment)
powered by radio frequency technology that offers a quick, convenient
and contactless way to make everyday purchases.
Large GPOs Stymie Medical Technology
Progress Washington,
D.C., July 16, 2003 — Self-policing “codes
of conduct” adopted
by hospital Group Purchasing Organizations (GPOs) under pressure from
Congress are inadequate and will not hasten patient access to innovative
medical technologies or reduce health care costs, the Senate Judiciary
Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights
learned today.
[Editor’s note: The foregoing items are
only a sampling of the databased events coverage available in Pervasive
Internet Report. A fully functioning demo issue (with simple
database searching enabled) is available.]
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