This week in machine to machine (M2M) news, TMC discussed that growth of M2M deployments within a range of industries, previewed the new mobile satellites from Ventev Wireless, and discussed the highly-sensitive topic of employee surveillance with regard to the new Robin location sensor and the advancing video surveillance market.
A recent Vodafone study revealed the growth of M2M deployments this year and its expected growth in various markets by 2016. The study surveyed 600 executives involved in M2M strategy, and approximately 22 percent indicated that their organizations had at least one active deployment. This marks an 80 percent growth over 2013, and the analysis predicts that the market will continue to expand. It indicates that the overall number of respondents with at least one deployment in 2016 will reach 74 percent. Specifically, the study predicts that, by 2016, the number of organizations with at least one M2M deployment in the energy and utility sector will reach 62 percent; transportation and logistics will reach 57 percent; automotive will reach 53 percent; retail will reach 51 percent; and manufacturing will reach 43 percent.
Ventev Wireless is helping to expand the mobile satellite market with three new TerraWave LTE-band wireless antennas it has added to its portfolio. The satellites support 3G and LTE mobile standards (with one additionally supporting Wi-Fi and GPS) and are primarily designed for the SCADA and telemetry, oil, gas, utility, and fleet management industries. ABI Research, in recent market study, predicted that the overall wireless antenna market would reach $2 billion by 2016.
Robin, a Boston tech startup, has introduced a new location sensor that employers can use to track employee movements. The Robin can track employees' locations and optionally provide them with supplementary information based on those locations. For instance, it could potentially offer several employees access to each others' Dropbox accounts if Robin knew they were all attending the same office meeting. Various organizations have used the Robin for desk and room booking and for tracking the availability of coworking spaces. Robin, the company, appears not to view its product as a privacy concern, but some critics suggest that it could change employee behavior and intrude on their lives to a higher degree than may be necessary.
On the other hand, surveillance plays a strong part in the security of many organizations. TMC notes that security cameras are becoming smaller and more inconspicuous, and therefore they are able to reside inside everyday devices. Such subterfuge could potentially disrupt employee privacy as well, but a policy of surveillance can prevent wrongdoing, to a certain extent, and catch criminals in the act of unlawfully tampering with company resources. Some companies such as Smartvue were on hand at Cloud Expo to speak about their video surveillance advancements.
