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Global enterprise suddenly “gets it” about device networking and smart Web services. But to sell it to them, suppliers will need business development, not just technology development.

Happily, recent alliances suggest that innovators are starting to build business ecosystems to meet adopter needs.

Harbor’s SIGNALSmart™ technology framework provides a simple model and language for suppliers and adopters alike.

[Editor’s note: This piece is a greatly condensed version of the Feature essay included in the new September-October 2003 issue of Pervasive Internet Report. If you’re not a subscriber, you can see a free demo of a past issue that includes simple database searching.]

This image of Harbor’s SIGNALSmart™ Framework offers a bird’s-eye view of the entire structure of the Pervasive Internet, with examples of technologies and suppliers. Click the image to download a high-resolution PDF file of both SIGNALSmart™ diagrams in this article (376 KB).

Suddenly, Adopters Are Beating the Drum
In the last year—even in the six months—a surprising thing has happened. Major potential adopters of Pervasive Internet techologies have suddenly “gotten it” about device networking, smart services, and the full-blown enterprise automation that Harbor Research calls “Invisible Business.”

Global corporations are now seriously interested in “going pervasive,” and they’re looking for real-world solutions. They wouldn’t mind a convincing ROI story, too, but the truth is that they’ve pretty much figured that out for themselves. It’s much more than “worth it,” and they know it. We’ve seen ample recent evidence of this, including at our own July executive summit with EU corporate leaders in Paris (download our free PDF white paper on the Paris summit).

This is a dream-come-true for suppliers, of course, but it has caught many of them unprepared—not so much technologically as culturally. They’ve been throwing stones out into the pond for a long time now, hoping that a ripple or two might make it all the way back. Suddenly, waves are splashing their shoes.

Suppliers Have Great Tech Dev.
Now They Need Great Biz Dev.
While those innovators were building 21^st century tools, their own business thinking often remained in the 20^th. The supplier community today remains quite unstructured, with many roles still unclear. Standards are still evolving, suppliers are struggling to survive the embryonic phase, and while there’s plenty of reality, there’s also plenty of hype. Thus, potential adopters have often heard a muddled and confusing story from suppliers, and this has only slowed rather than hastened adoption.

The business and intellectual-property landscape has been revolutionized since (and partly because of) the dot-com boom. The era of monolithic vendors is over. Competition no longer means a single company / single standard going up against another single company / single standard (e.g., Windows vs. OS/2). Today, business-alliance “webs” or “ecosystems” compete against other webs / ecosystems. To create the value that customers expect in the Pervasive era, suppliers need to imagine futuristic business possibilities beyond adopters’ wildest dreams, and then forge inspired, foresighted partnerships to deliver them.

Suppliers Start Forming Pervasive Alliances
Happily, essential and exciting alliances are starting to gel as suppliers become increasingly aware that interoperability and key strategic partnerships will make or break their futures in the implementation of the Pervasive Internet. Some examples of the emergent activity, on various levels, include:

 Schneider Electric / France Telecom
Schneider Electric and France Telecom have formed a joint venture called Senside to offer high value-added services to the industrial sector. Senside offers a Remote Monitoring and Diagnostic service that specifically addresses machine manufacturers. Senside’s mission is to help manufacturers achieve heightened awareness of, and responsibility for, the lifecycle of their equipment, toward the goal of reduced maintenance costs and increased performance.

 Nokia / Opto 22 / AT&T
Nokia is spearheading a broad-based initiative to create a market for wireless M2M (machine-to-machine) solutions. Opto 22, a Nokia customer and collaborator in this effort, achieved the first commercial adoption of Nokia’s M2M Platform with a water-monitoring solution for BioLab, Inc. In conjunction with this event, AT&T became the first wireless carrier to approve the Nokia 31 M2M Connectivity Terminal for use on its GSM/GPRS network.

 Lantronix / emWare
The two companies recently announced that emWare will begin selling a new solution that integrates Lantronix’s UDS Device Servers with emWare’s DeviceView™ Remote Device Management Software. The companies say this alliance enables the delivery of a complete, secure solution for remotely monitoring, managing and controlling virtually any type of device located anywhere in the world.

 Honeywell / Tridium
The building controls leader and the emergent provider of Internet-based control and automation infrastructure have entered into a multi-year alliance. Honeywell will utilize Tridium’s technology solutions for their building automation customers, and Tridium (profiled in the September-October 2003 issue of PIR) will market Honeywell’s controllers and components to its systems integrators.

 Sensoria / Soflinx
Sensoria has partnered with Soflinx Corporation (both profiled in the September-October 2003 issue of PIR) to deliver a comprehensive solution for CBRN monitoring of high-value buildings and campuses. This first complete solution includes sensors that detect chemical and radiological threats, a self-configuring wireless LAN provided by Sensoria, software developed by Soflinx that processes sensor measurements and applies detection logic in real-time, and a centralized server that collects, stores, analyzes, and delivers both raw and processed sensor data to a variety of users.

Harbor’s SIGNALSmart™: A Framework for Adopters and Suppliers Alike
Adopters and suppliers need a clear portrait of the Pervasive Internet technology path. They also need clear terminology for talking about it, and a way of understanding which suppliers deliver which pieces of the solution.

To meet these needs, Harbor Research has developed the SIGNALSmart™ Framework. SIGNALSmart™ is an acronym that begins with the Pervasive Internet’s ultimate “deliverable”—Smart Services—and then works its way back to the humble but crucial Smart Devices that generate the data upon which the entire automated enterprise will be built.

This image of the SIGNALSmart™ Framework offers a diagrammatic view of the Pervasive Internet technology path, and the relationships of its components. Click the image to download a high-resolution PDF file of both SIGNALSmart™ diagrams in this article (376 KB).

The SIGNALSmart™ Framework has seven components:

 S: Smart Services
Service providers create the “content” of Pervasive Internet applications, but this is content in its broadest possible sense. Traditional service companies will be joined both by product companies adopting new business models and by new, highly focused entrants seeking to unlock the power of the distributed sensing, control, and optimization enabled by intelligent, networked devices.

 I: Back-Office Infrastructure
The back office is a broad array of servers, switches, storage, software, and systems integration. It is especially important to the world of the Pervasive Internet because a tightly integrated Infrastructure is an important differentiator and the key enabler for Service providers. And for providers of Infrastructure (Sun, Cisco, IBM, H-P, etc.), the area has been historically fat with margins. But the really important activities at the moment are in platform and enterprise software.

 G: Gateways
A gateway terminates all protocol layers and translates one protocol stack into another. WAP gateways, for instance, translate the HTML (riding TCP/IP) meant for a PC-based browser into the WML (riding one of the cellular/PCS protocols) for a wireless device. A Gateway is not necessarily a physical entity. As software functionality, it can reside anywhere between the Smart device and the Infrastructure.

 N: Core Networking
The key contribution of the core Network is not high bandwidth (smart devices don’t need it) but a reliable “always on” connection. Yet the opportunity only begins with that. Core providers now have the chance to “get it” about device-oriented services and to become a new kind of entity—the “device ISP” or “infotributor”—with very strong barriers around their position. (See our free white paper, “Core Network Providers: Can They Escape the Commoditization Spiral?”—PDF, 740 KB.)

 A: Access
Often overlooked, the “last mile” is a cornerstone of the Pervasive Internet. Further, Access technologies are progressing rapidly. For example, number of emerging technologies promise global standards for wireless device access—and white goods manufacturers such as Whirlpool and Electrolux are quicklly aligning themselves with providers of mobile technology (Nokia and Ericsson, respectively).

 L: Local Networking
Local networking is a crucial link in the Pervasive Internet, but its necessity has somewhat different drivers from the LANs of the second-generation world of PCs and client-server architecture. This has caused a great deal of uncertainty and a large number of proposed “standard” solutions. Successful device networking will combine the distributed intelligence and security of peer-to-peer with the data warehousing/analytics and server-based apps of the client-server model.

 L: Local Networking
Local networking is a crucial link in the Pervasive Internet, but its necessity has somewhat different drivers from the LANs of the second-generation world of PCs and client-server architecture. This has caused a great deal of uncertainty and a large number of proposed “standard” solutions. Successful device networking will combine the distributed intelligence and security of peer-to-peer with the data warehousing/analytics and server-based apps of the client-server model.

 Smart™: Smart Devices
The humble footsoldiers of the Pervasive Internet are the billions—yes, billions—of intelligent devices and products that have been deployed in recent years in every vertical market. Smart devices sense their own reality (and/or that of their environment) and generate transmittable data about their use and status. These data have gone largely unharvested until recently because most smart devices were not networkable. Such devices will quickly become increasingly networked as sensors and processing power are built into virtually everything that uses electricity. The “network effect” will make it progressively cheaper to do this, just as it will rapidly transform non-networked devices into a wasteful and unattractive proposition.

So how is this actually going to happen in the real world?

Harbor Research believes strongly that, among Pervasive Internet technology suppliers, a handful of “dominant/parasitic” alliance-teams will quickly emerge to respond to adopter pressure for end-to-end solutions that work and make sense economically. The earliest alliances to deliver robust, full-spectrum solutions will create a serious barrier-to-entry for laggards.

Thus it’s vitally important that suppliers act now to get their alliance/ecosystem act together. They must re-learn their own story from the adopter point-of-view, and forge the strategic partnerships necessary to fill adopter needs. Companies that don’t do this will simply vanish, or watch their hard-won intellectual property bought cheap by the winners.

[Editor’s note: You can comment on this piece or anything else we do by sending email to feedback@harborresearch.com.]