I’ve written a few articles on M2M in the Cloud, which is a very interesting and logical development, but I see it as work in progress. Recently I posted one article, “M2M in a Hybrid Cloud”, on LinkedIn. The title indicates that we are, in my opinion, getting there but some of the reactions I got suggested that there were various solutions that met the Cloud criteria.  In addition, I got an email from somebody who was confused about the use of the term “Cloud” in specific cases. I know this person: he is an M2M expert and he knows a lot about cloud computing, so I felt obliged to come up with a response.

Confusion is being generated because “M2M in the Cloud” has a nice marketing ring about it so the term is being abused. No surprises there. I started by Googling the term, expecting to see something on Wikipedia, but there wasn’t anything. The top hit was a paper from Numerex (News - Alert), which had triggered my interest in Q3 last year: after that I was delighted to see my articles. Conclusion: there isn’t an agreed definition. I’m not in a position to take on that task, but I can indicate what I think to be the requisite criteria for cloud-centric solutions.

M2M isn’t broke so why fix it?

The M2M silo model is not an efficient way to communicate and it’s also a barrier to further development. It’s inefficient because the same wheel is reinvented for different silos. And it’s a barrier because mainstream business processes have migrated to a horizontal model.

Integration with those processes is also required because enterprises are mobilizing the employee side of their business processes, e.g. enabling access to back-office databases via smartphones. When M2M applications are integrated, when the applications become part of the ICT environment, databases can be updated automatically with real-time information coming from the vertical applications, thereby complementing the manual process and leveraging both investments. 

The ICT environment

Mainstream applications/business processes run/ran on powerful servers that employ industry standards, but they are silo solutions. One server might run CRM, another does ERP and so on, and they are over-engineered, i.e. the resources must be able to handle peak workloads. The rest of the time the resources are under- employed and at times the servers may be idle.

In recent years these processes have been distributed across multiple servers in centralized data centers, which are usually accessed via a secure Internet connection. “Cloud” comes from the way that the Net is represented.

This development involved a decomposition process whereby applications were divided into components that can be linked and shared. Decomposition was done in order to obtain more efficient use of computing resources and to facilitate the development of new applications. In this model applications are decoupled from dedicated hardware: they become virtual apps but are used the same way.

Key cloud criteria: ICT functions in a standards-based environment. It employs a flat, horizontal model and has a common system architecture that enables component sharing.

In a nutshell, a meaningful M2M in the Cloud solution should replicate that environment and its component sharing functionality.

Significant progress

M2M has been and continuities to be an amazing success story, but without standards M2M will never realize its full potential. However, various standardization organizations such as ETSI have been working on this issue for two years and significant progress has been made. There is an agreement on a high-level system architecture as well as the requisite service capabilities. As illustrated, it has extended M2M capabilities in the core networks as well as a separate device domain.

The core network provides: IP connectivity; service and network control; interconnection (with other networks); and roaming. The M2M service capabilities provide: functions that can be shared by different applications; exposure of functionality via open interfaces; use of core network functionality; and simplified, optimized application development and deployment.

The italicized words are particularly significant, as this development will allow M2M applications to migrate from the current vertical model and adopt the horizontal cloud-computing model of today’s enterprise environment. 

Getting there

The ETSI model should be seen as a design and functionality objective that will be realized in different ways. Viewbiquity’s (News - Alert) solution, which was covered in “M2M in a Hybrid Cloud”, is very close and it has extended the concept via the ability to integrate legacy M2M assets (e.g. fleet management systems) with communications systems (IP PBXs).

Numerex’s FAST (News - Alert) solution came up in various in several reactions to the posting on LinkedIn and as mentioned earlier, this was the development that got me interested in cloud-centric M2M. My take, as the time, was that rather than wait for standards to be nailed down. Numerex had developed an open, customizable middleware platform. 

Basically FAST’s architecture is that of an application stack that has all the building blocks necessary for the rapid development of an M2M solution and you can see it as a cloud-centric solution. At the lowest layer there is a virtual machine (VM) that resides on a fault-tolerant server in the Numerex data center. This is the cloud model, which features scalable server capability and memory allocation.

A device gateway, software that sits on the VM can use different protocols and a key function is the ability to translate M2M device data into something that is usable by the single, Web-optimized applications database as well as one or more device-optimized database(s). MySQL is the open source database platform of choice and this indicates the relative ease with which the information can be integrated with business processes, e.g. SAP (News - Alert), as illustrated.

FAST would therefore appear to be very close to the kind of open, standards-based platforms that will enable M2M applications to become a seamless component of an enterprise’s cloud-centric environment.

Conclusion

I’ve suggested — and that’s all it is, a suggestion — that cloud-centric M2M solutions should replicate the architecture and functionality of regular cloud computing. And I think they will, in time. In the meantime we have solutions that come close and how the vendors brand them doesn’t really matter. That said, the term is being abused because “M2M in the Cloud” has that nice marketing ring about it. At the end of the day it’s just four words and as a latter day Humpty Dumpty might say: “When I use words they mean just what I choose them to mean – neither more nor less.”

Want to learn more about M2M technologies? Then be sure to check out the M2M Evolution conference, collocated with TMC’s ITEXPO West 2011, taking place Sept. 13-15, 2011, in Austin, Texas. The M2M Evolution Conference is for those industry professionals interested in capitalizing on a rapidly growing segment of the telecom industry. The M2M Evolution Conference embraces the any-to-any strategy of the Internet today. Co-sponsored by TMC Partner Crossfire Media, it showcases the solutions, and examines the data strategies and technological requirements that enterprises and carriers need to capitalize on a market segment that is estimated to grow to $300 Billion in the year ahead. To register, click here.

Bob Emmerson (News - Alert) is TMC's European Editor. To stay abreast of the latest news affecting the European market, check out Bob's columnist page.

Edited by Jennifer Russell