For a long time now, ordinary citizens have had global networks, wireless devices, sensors/controllers, and digital computing in their daily lives: the telephone, the radio, the thermostat, the PC. When we look back to 2004 from the completely connected and automated world of 2020, what’s happening today will seem pretty simple: After a mysteriously long delay, people finally hooked together a bunch of stuff they had possessed for decades—some of it for a century.

From the perspective of 2020, the synergies and wisdom of connecting all those components will look like something a child could have seen. At its bedrock level, it’s a small step, a little thing. But “little things can make a big difference.” That was the theme of Malcolm Gladwell’s 2000 bestseller The Tipping Point. Under the right conditions, tiny viral agents can create epidemics. And as we know from computer viruses or the success of Open Source, the presence of a network is one of those conditions.

Today, M2M/Pervasive Internet technologies are starting to “tip.” In the big picture, the basic technological change is trivial—the beating of a butterfly wing. But amplified and regenerated and re-amplified over and over in just the right way, that butterfly wing could shake the Golden Gate into the Bay. Unfortunately, that particular kind of cause-and-effect flies in the face of “common sense.” The massive consequences of tiny changes can be totally counter-intuitive. And that’s where we are today.

A journalist named Jeff Miller captured this quite well in a recent Mass High Tech article about Boston-based Ember Corporation’s acquisition of chip expertise and engineers from Cambridge Consultants:

Applications for low-power embedded mesh networking technologies are all over the map, which [is] both a blessing and a curse. The potential market is large. But its uses are fragmented and not necessarily obvious.

“Three years ago when we talked about networking light switches, people were saying, ’Why would you want to do something like that?’” said Robert Poor, Ember’s co-founder and CTO. “Now there’s an office building in Chicago that does exactly that, and when I tell people about it, they’re unfazed. That’s a good sign. It’s entered the public consciousness.”

Ember’s CTO is describing Gladwell’s “tipping point.” But that “blessing and curse” of ubiquitous computing is a source of great confusion for many potential stakeholders in the phenomenon—in particular, traditional technology investors.

Is there a good fit between venture capitalists and the pervasive computing and wireless sensor opportunity? After significant challenges in raising capital, many start-ups are noting new VC interest in M2M and wireless sensor networking. And real events have certainly occurred. To cite only one early and one late example, GlobeRanger, an appealingly horizontal “edgeware” provider, secured $10.8 million in a Sevin Rosen-led first round all the way back in 2000. And in early 2004, Dust, Inc., a pioneer in low-power wireless mesh sensor networks, raised $7 million in a Series A round led by Foundation Capital.

We could point to other examples, and there’s no doubt about the recent heightened interest. But even so, we’re still faced with a significant investment void, even as the whole phenomenon begins to tip. Why?

Timing and pervasiveness itself are barriers to VC interest playing itself out on a larger scale. As Jeff Miller noted, the uses of the technology are “fragmented and not necessarily obvious.” That fragmentation is reflected in both the technology itself and the entrepreurial landscape. It’s “all over the map.” This presents a set of mysteries and risks that may make the opportunity inappropriate for all but the very few. By the time that picture clears up, many start-ups will have matured beyond the VC-funding stage.

If the opportunity as it exists today is not right for typical VCs and traditional institutional investors, the next early-stage candidates would be larger strategic investors—entities like Siemens, ABB, Honeywell, IBM, HP, Emerson, and so on. However, this group suffered heavily in many of the last attempts to leverage corporate investing before the Internet bubble burst. A fragmented and “non-obvious” opportunity is hard for them to grapple with, too, even when they understand the technology and its revolutionary implications perfectly well.

M2M, the Pervasive Internet, ubiquitous computing, device networking—call it what you will. The whole problem with the pervasive phenomenon is just that—it’s pervasive. It will change the world profoundly, but in non-obvious and even invisible ways—one amplification of the butterfly wing after another. Investment has to come from somewhere, and yet the phenomenon is “everywhere and nowhere.” Given the counter-intuitive attributes of this brave new world, it seems most likely that new kinds of collaboration among traditional investment entities will be required to allow the glorious and inevitable future to occur in a reasonably smooth manner.

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:

1. Visit our free, live SmartSphere® demonstrations. They say pictures are worth a thousand words. What are they worth if they’re pictures of your whole world, and you can fly around inside the pictures with your mouse?
2. Download a brochure on the SmartSphere® research platform and services (PDF, 970 KB).
3. Download a brochure about our SmartSphere® “living research” projects on the M2M/Pervasive Internet phenomenon (PDF, 240 KB).

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.

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 21^st 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® demonstrations, you’ll see limited versions of our own projects. Currently, they include Pervasive Internet Suppliers, Smart Buildings, Smart Power, Wireless Sensor Networks, and Cluster Computing. Bear in mind that the full versions of these projects include vastly more information than the limited demonstration versions. The “Pervasive Internet Suppliers” project, for example, was created to replace and improve our own earlier online publication, Pervasive Internet Report.

The “Cluster Computing” demo is a brand-new project, featuring content developed in association with Barrington Partners. We’re very excited about our new alliance with Barrington. Together, we plan to develop SmartSphere®-based research on several important new technology growth areas, in both multi-client and single-client formats. (If the “Cluster Computing” project in particular interests you, send us mail or call us.)

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.

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.

1. Visit our free, live SmartSphere® demonstrations.
2. Download a brochure on the SmartSphere® research platform and services (PDF, 970 KB).
3. Download a brochure about our SmartSphere® “living research” projects on the M2M/Pervasive Internet phenomenon (PDF, 240 KB).

What do your colleagues and customers think about key Pervasive issues? Find out, fast and free.
Harbor’s site visitors are technologists and business leaders with the same thing on their minds: Internet-enabled device networking, smart services, and enterprise automation.

Our Polling Booth lets you can tap into this unique community in a very real and valuable way. Cast your own vote on a key Pervasive question and see all votes charted in real time. (Click “Vote!” in the site’s navigation to get there.) You can vote only once on each question, but you can come back any time to see the latest results. You can even cite the polling data in your own site pages or publications—providing you credit Harbor Research as the source.

We’ve started with a handful of questions about core Pervasive issues, and we’ll add more regularly. Do you want community opinion on something we haven’t asked about? We welcome suggestions for the Polling Booth at feedback@harborresearch.com.

Visit our site and try out the polls and charts. Click “Vote!” in the main navigation.