When James Brehm and I first talked about the Battle of the Platforms, we were very clear that we wanted to make sure that the battle helped us explain to the M2M community why the term platform could be so universally used. We didn’t want to discourage the innovation; we just wanted to categorize it.So it’s no wonder that the participants are helping us already by defining the scope of the awards within the event.
Here are the categories:
- Enabling independent applications developers to work with M2M devices - Here we are looking at how third parties use APIs to manage information flow and connect to the users existing systems.
- Platform for best BI controls solutions - Here we are looking at the ability to deliver thresholding and performance criteria in a manner that makes business decisions logical, simple and as self evident as possible.
- Platform for service providers to support wholesale services - Here we are looking at how the provisioning of M2M is streamlined and available for rapid deployment.
- Platform for enterprise deployment - Here we are looking at the ability to partition and deliver specific solutions where the enterprise manages independent of the location of their equipment.
When we wrote the criteria we thought the categorization of the awards would be in the judges hands. OnAsset and Kore Telematics are the companies in the general judging criteria.
In both cases they have centers to support their customers. OnAsset has a strong focus on supply chain and in particular the issues with air shipment. In Kore’s case, the company specifically has a strategy that seems to interface well with the carriers need for support on provisioning and management.
The companies that want us to look at how they enable application developers include Loc-aid and RF Monolithics. Here the differences are pretty striking in the fact that Loc-aid is aptly named for the support of location development tools and RF Monolithics, as the name implies, is focused on managing the sensors and the intelligence they supply.
The category of enterprise deployment is rich in scope since Digi, Gurtam and SenseAware powered by FedEx are all participating. As a broad category they are all linked to asset tracking but the reality is the can include anything from “Cold Chain” to “Tanks” and everything in between.
Vistracks wants to be the judge on how its enables a service provider and indeed the company has some white labeling that can be handy to the carrier as well as a broad range of specific vertical implementations.
On the business intelligence side, Eurotech has placed itself in that category with its cloud capabilities and analytics.
It should be very interesting and I want to remind everyone to register for their ring side seats. I do not promise blood, but I do promise a great experience.
Want to learn more about M2M technologies? Don’t miss the M2M Evolution Conference, collocated with ITEXPO Austin 2012 taking place Oct. 2-5, in Austin, TX. Stay in touch with everything happening at M2M Evolution Conference. Follow us on Twitter.
Edited by
Stefanie Mosca
