Machine-to-machine (M2M) communication has long been focused on wired and wireless communication technologies. Now, however, M2M technology is emerging as "a foundation for cost-effective, real-time visibility to assets and facilitates innovative 'smart services' business solutions that improve asset utilization, boost service levels, and exploit new revenue opportunities," according to Machine-to-Machine Communication: Technology Landscape and Value Chain Overview, a recent report from independent research and advisory firm Manufacturing Insights.

M2M loosely describes communications between machines via wireless technologies such as cell phone network technologies, WLAN, radio frequency identification (RFID) and Bluetooth.

In operations throughout the world, M2M technology is enabling real-time operations management and communication, thus enhancing data reporting, field communications, load control systems and fleet management.

Industrial personal digital assistants (PDAs), point-of-sale and wireless credit-card readers were among the first M2M applications widely accepted in the marketplace. Currently, though, "the most widely used M2M application is remote monitoring of static machinery and equipment to ensure system functionality, reliability and for affordable and practical preventive maintenance," according to M2M Magazine.

Of the nearly 20 million M2M mobile-module units Gartner estimates were shipped in 2007, most were in the transport and telematics sectors, with growth rates expected to continue at about 30 percent to 40 percent over the next few years. (Source: ComputerWeekly.com)

"Although the market for machine-to-machine (M2M) technology is still in its early days," ComputerWeekly.com noted earlier this year, "it has real potential for mass adoption with possible applications limited only by the imagination."

Indeed, communication between machines is rife with possibilities, with resultant benefits in productivity, innovation, compliance and, of course, new revenue streams.

Although M2M has seen steady growth in recent years, it hasn't been an easy journey, with adoption rates trailing lofty growth estimates.

"Adopters [of the technology] are counted in the hundreds and units are counted in the tens of millions — a number that sounds impressive until you realize it's not nearly enough to sustain this young and seemingly vulnerable market," according to one comprehensive report on the technology in M2M Magazine last November.

In 2003, British consultancy the ARC Group (which has since been bought by Informa Telecoms & Media) forecast that the market could be worth more than $100 billion by 2007. Today the market is a $50 billion business with projected growth to more than $250 billion by the end of 2012, according to global analyst Beecham Research's June 2008 report, The Internet of Things: Worldwide M2M Market Forecast.

"Expectations were so high because much of the technology exists already," according to a 2007 report from The Economist, titled What the Mousetrap Said (click here).

As increasingly more businesses now look to design wireless into their applications, plenty of work is required before wireless communications can fulfill their promise.

Among the major hurdles of M2M technology: want of common standards and protocols, privacy and, that threat to any relatively new technology, cost.

It is being held back by nontechnical factors such as "the lack of integration among different parts of the industry and the need for companies to change the way they operate," according to the Economist report. "In the computing world, the providers of networks, hardware, and software work relatively smoothly together because of common standards... . But wireless M2M systems have to start from scratch every time."

For one, "module makers and service providers alike [must] acknowledge the need to re-evaluate the industry's strict requirements which differ markedly from regular mobile phone and data plans," says WirelessWeek. In another, 14-page report last year, titled When Everything Connects, The Economist seemed to agree, saying, "Until common standards and protocols emerge for machine-to-machine and wireless sensor communications, costs will be a problem."

"A greater concern in the long term is privacy," The Economist continued:

Today's laws often assume that privacy is guaranteed by a pact between consumer and company, or citizen and state. In a world where many networks interconnect on the fly and information is widely shared, that will not work. At a minimum, wireless networks should let users know when they are being monitored.

The good news is "an abundance of hardware and services" for the market, says WirelessWeek. And these products and services are gradually getting cheaper.

"Today in M2M, the falling cost of communications hardware is facilitating lower upfront cost," according to M2M Magazine. "Even more crucial, the cost of network communications continues to become more conducive to machine data transfer."

"The point about M2M is the service opportunities enabled through the deployment of M2M technologies," Beecham Research CEO Robin Duke-Woolley said at the annual M2M United industry event in Chicago last month. "It is not essentially a technology story — it is a services story... . If you concentrate on just one particular technology, you risk missing the big picture."

Resources

Internet of Things: Worldwide M2M Market Forecast
Beecham Research, June 23, 2008

Machine-to-Machine Communication: Technology Landscape and Value Chain Overview
by Joe Barkai
Manufacturing Insights, April 3, 2008

Machine-to-Machine Technology Takes Off
by Cath Jennings
ComputerWeekly.com, Jan. 21, 2008

M2M Hurdles
by Evan Koblentz
WirelessWeek, June 1, 2008

See Who's Driving His Company Down a Very Strategic Path for the Future of M2M Today and Tomorrow
M2M Magazine, April 21, 2008

On the Brink
M2M Magazine, Nov. 19, 2007

What the Mousetrap Said
The Economist, April 26, 2007

The Coming Wireless Revolution
The Economist, April 26, 2007