M2M beyond the hype - Connect-World

M2M - adding valueM2M - beyond connectivityby Anand Gonuguntla, Co-Founder & CEO, Centina SystemsIn the coming years, M2M promises to be among the most rapidly growing uses of mobilenetworks. The return on selling connectivity alone, however, will be low. Operators mustinvest in creating value-added services that help end users turn their M2M data into valuableinformation and services. Since the ARPU for M2M is low, operator must depend upon thequality of service, flawless connectivity and bandwidth to retain customers and the efficientprocessing of large volumes to build profit margins.Anand Gonuguntla is the Co-Founder, President and CEO of Centina Systems; he has over 15 years’ experience in the telecom industry.Prior to his current role, Mr Gonuguntla was the Director of Systems and Software Engineering at Xtera. Mr Gonuguntla also heldmanagement positions in software and program management at Fujitsu. He has published papers in the Proceedings of the ACM andholds a patent in network management.Anand Gonuguntla holds a master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of North Dakota, and a bachelor’s degree inElectronics and Communications Engineering from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, India.Machine-to-machine (M2M) communicationsare poised to take off, as the ubiquity ofmobile broadband and the adoption of cloudbasedservices and processes, continuesapace. The so-called Internet of Things,which which promises to connect everythingfrom cars and utility meters to refrigeratorsand sofas to the cloud and to each other, is avision with the power to transform industriesas well as lifestyles.To dominate M2M services effectively,operators will require a number of newOSS/BSS and back-office features thatoffer visibility into network and serviceperformance in a granular, real-time way.Operational challengesGenerating revenues with M2M requires, firstand foremost, operational efficiency. As withclassic telematics, the ARPU per device willbe small, so the business model depends uponvolume and bolstering margins by reducingcosts. Operators are moving to open-accessplatforms, networks and policies to encouragerapid service growth based upon Internetconnectedinnovation. This, nevertheless, putsadded pressure on operators to reconsider theirbusiness models and BSS/OSS investments,to drive increasing operational efficienciesand improved agility in order to capture thegrowing cloud services opportunity.M2M also drives a renewed focus onassuring the customer experience. ManyM2M deployments are mission critical:consider smart grid, remote-controlledheating and cooling systems, or connectedcars - all of these implementations havelittle tolerance for downtime. Operator whocannot guarantee service levels, connectivityand bandwidth to support these services willnot survive in this market.Many of these services will be running onmobile data networks - a finite resource. Asthe proliferation of M2M devices escalates,operators will need to employ a performancemanagement solution that gives them controlover network resources, so that they canbetter correlate data consumption to networkcapacity, thus ensuring maximum payback ontheir network investments.Further, according to a report from theCarbon War Room, a big barrier for serviceproviders trying to roll out new M2Mservices is a lack of performance data -this makes it difficult to prove ROI to endusers. “Potential clients need to understandM2M technologies’ value proposition asthese technologies often require significantEurope II 2013 • 11