This was all part of the World Smart Week event, which gathered together a total of 1,375 ICT professionals on the French Riviera.
‘A three-letter word for a mess’ Steve Priestley, EMEA managing director of Wyless, told the audience, “M2M is a three-letter word for a mess”. In his paper to the conference he had already reminded everyone that “there is no on-size-fits-all solution” for M2M. Asked by the moderator, Jeremy Cowan, editor of M2M Now, what were the most common problems or challenges that customers bring to him, Priestley said: “We have solutions that fit multiple stratas of technology, whether they’re business-to-business or business-to-business-to-consumer. For example, we have 20-30 different solution sets, all termed eHealth. There are a bunch of technologies that come together to solve some of these problems. “Unfortunately what happens is, you then have to fit a financial model. What our industry has got to do is lead people through how we create solutions in a far more professional and beneficial way, such that we’re solving the needs. The industry as a whole has got to take charge of that and build products that make problems go away in an easy fashion,” said Priestley. As recalled by Deutsche Telekom‘s head of International Sales Development, Sven Krey at the plenary opening session, “Driving M2M Innovation is vital for the M2M ecosystem”. Indeed, this was precisely the slogan of the conference. Like Deutsche Telekom, other opening keynotes insisted on innovative and flexible business models to create endto-end solutions and value.
‘Big Data doesn’t scale’ Also key to achieving the full potential for M2M services, Dr. Gareth Noyes, chief strategy officer at Wind River, maintained that Big Data doesn’t scale: a data-centric design is required, bringing intelligence where needed in the Internet of Things (IoT) architecture. Partnerships and collaborations were two other keywords, and they were widely and forcefully debated during the panel “So you want to get M2M
services to market quickly and profitably” chaired by M2M Now’s editorial director, Jeremy Cowan (pictured above). Maingate’s CEO, Baard Eilertsen set the tone, launching his remarks with a provocative statement, “M2M is dead” to highlight that the M2M industry as still too technology-driven. The exchanges that followed and the rest of the conference’s multiple sessions showed that M2M innovation is about a lot more than just technology. On Wednesday and Thursday morning, 10 thematic sessions in two parallel tracks tackled both sides of innovation: The ‘M2M for Verticals’ track focused on the most innovative M2M implementations, the lessons learned and advanced solutions in Smart Grids, Retail and Smart Home/Smart Devices.
M2M Now’s editorial director, Jeremy Cowan chaired the session, “So you want to get M2M services to market quickly and profitably”
The ‘Strategies & Implementation’ track covered tomorrow’s ecosystems and solutions that will drive M2M growth: innovative ways to better integrate ecosystems; focus on Big Data; platform interoperability issues; as well as connectivity challenges and security.
Multiple live experiences In addition to the conference content, the Congress offered multiple live experiences, in particular a private demonstration of ‘Nice Grid’, a pioneer solar-energy smart grid that is claimed to be unique in the world when judged by its scale and ambition. The exhibition running alongside the conference provided additional opportunities for delegates to get their hands on the latest solutions and products. On this occasion, ThingWorx and SIGFOX announced their partnership. The partners demonstrated an endto-end smart meter and intrusion-detection application on stage, running on the SIGFOX network and the ThingWorx application platform. Cellnetrix also showcased several live demonstrations of different configurations of M2M device identity modules for example. The M2M Innovation World Congress experience was completed with several social events, in particular the Gala Evening held at the stylish Palais de la Méditerranée on Nice’s Promenade des Anglais.
Other key sessions were filmed and videos will be available online from early December through the World Smart Week.TV webcast platform. And you can see event photos on the Congress’s Home Page at www.m2minnovationworldcongress.com See the video online at: http://youtu.be/CzNoV53YnQE See slide presentations online at: www.m2minnovationworldcongress.com/proceedings
M2M M2M Now Now December October 2013
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