The M2M Evolution event in Austin last week was primarily focused on Remote Asset Management and Transportation. The event was lead by Nikki Cuban from OnAsset who did a great job leading an event that was not about the technology, but rather the value of the business.

Instead, Cuban brought the asset management side not to the technology but to the value of the items. She brought some speakers from vendors and carriers that were mixed in with companies like DHL and Southwest Airlines and associations like TAPA and NASCO.

Back when I serviced Wall Street, I would talk the bits per seconds to my customers, who would chide me and share that their models were based on dollars per second. It’s a lot easier to justify fiber using their terms. Adam Crossno, the President and CEO pointed out that the pressure is to move to evolve from device driven to application solutions. As he put it “where there is complexity there is the chance to innovate.”

And complexity is an understatement. We have hard and soft definitions of M2M that size the opportunities in the trillions, the verticals in the billions and include both direct and indirect connections. Vikrant Ghandi of Frost and Sullivan, pointed out that from a device perspective there about eight different categories of personal mobile devices as compared to over 20 M2M types of devices and their applications (which will incorporate the eight personal devices in some way). On the road, it can be anything from a RFID/NFC on the product or packaging to the truck and driver being monitored via their phone or tablet.

Mike Sapien of Ovum (News - Alert) pointed out that the complexity of the opportunity requires partnerships, and the good news is the carriers understand the market is so large that partnerships are essential. John Horn, CEO of Raco Wireless explained that speed is the key and no single pricing model is going to fit all the applications. Carriers need to accept that flexibility is required to meet the demand.

That’s not to say that standards aren’t important, but as Taya Tuggle from the Transport Asset Protection Association [TAPA] pointed out loss represents $900 billion and the average per incident of theft is increasing by 69 percent. The associations 700+ members don’t have a local problem they have a need for global solutions.

James Brehm of Compass (News - Alert) Intelligence asked the simple question, “If M2M were baseball, what inning would we be in?” His answer is that we are in Spring Training. I agree with that analysis, and recognize that Remote Asset and Transportation (which James sizes just for export as a $16 trillion market) is probably the equivalent of all of baseball; pro, college, little league, soft and whiffle ball. All M2M is probably analogous to sports, including real football (soccer) real tackles (rugby) and every other sport.

You can find copies of the slides here but the networking that was done you will have to wait until the M2M event in Miami to capture that experience. I hope you are up for the game.