In an exclusive interaction with Infotech Lead, WebNMS director Prabhu Ramachandran talks about various initiatives from WebNMS for the M2M and Internet of Things world.
What are the latest offerings from WebNMS for M2M and Internet of Things?
Renewable energy is growing in dominance across the world with Government initiatives strongly supporting energy efficiency and environmental protection. For instance, Emirates Energy Star Program and China Sustainable Energy Program are fuelling clean energy for sustainable growth. WebNMS M2M latest comprehensive energy solutions include Windmill Manager and Solar Farm Manager.
Each wind turbine comprises of various components like water cooler, high voltage transformer, generator, blades, sensors, gear box, and hub controller. WebNMS Windmill manager solution is the next generation technology that facilitates to measure, monitor and control turbines in real time without field visits and ensures safe operation of these turbines by managing the overall health.
WebNMS Solar Farm Manager solution improves the returns of a solar plant in two aspects viz. improves the energy yield / output and drives down the performance issues like system losses, hardware malfunction etc.
What are the demands from your enterprise customers?
M2M is set to proliferate innovation within the enterprises as smart machines and smart applications create new revenue streams, reduce costs, and improve products and services.
WebNMS ATM Site Manager is getting limelight after the brutal ATM attack in Bangalore. In a country where more than 50 percent of the ATM Sites doesn’t have security guards, M2M driven ATM sites are need of the hour to overcome security lapses in ATM kiosks across the country. Apart from the security, M2M assists operators to overcome other bottlenecks mounting on them like energy management, fault management, rising operating costs, and reporting.
What are your new strategies to expand business in new geographies and gain customers?
Strong set of APIs with wide range of device connectivity options are making it easy for our customers to rapidly build M2M applications with minimal investments and faster time –to- market. The phenomenal growth in data has also laid a tremendous amount of attention in WebNMS Big Data and Analytics.
WebNMS’s niche M2M solutions and M2M Platform are the core strengths in expanding the business to new geographies. WebNMS M2M Platform’s open API and n-tier architecture allows enterprises to develop and deploy wide range of applications in few weeks’ time.
Global M2M market is highly specialized; we are focusing on choosing a right partner which is critical for a successful deployment. We are also sponsoring/exhibiting in various M2M and Renewable Energy tradeshows in US, Middle East, and Africa.
What are the latest trends in M2M and IoT?
M2M (Machine to Machine) is gaining prominence and is transforming every industry and everyone’s lifestyle ‘smart’. Businesses and IT decision makers are taking advantage of the information that streams from the passive assets for pro-active decision making.
Apart from industrial implementation, M2M also shows momentum in consumer sector with the advent of Smart Home technology. Smart –home technology involves automation and centralized remote of home appliances of which includes security, remote devices, theft monitoring, alert notifications, lighting and HVAC control, energy usage monitoring, fire and smoke monitoring.
Home automation solution shrinks the home in one’s palm; it guards the home and protects one’s family. It empowers the owners to control locks and other home appliances on the move. Other advancing M2M application in consumer segment is healthcare solutions.
What are your challenges in improving business in this sector?
At present, M2M ecosystem is fragmented and the realization of an ecosystem might be time consuming, but co-ordination of all the parties in the ecosystem will drive the industry forward and increase the adoption rate.
The M2M market is gaining momentum but to gain the market potential key challenges around business models, standards, technology, and end-user concerns need to be addressed.
Also, M2M evolution is opening lots of avenues to communication service providers (CSPs), system integrators, managed services and application domain experts. With the spur in M2M market in India, the Govt of India has intervened and taken initiatives to frame M2M Policy. WebNMS M2M is coordinating with the Government in framing M2M policy.
What are the growth drivers? Which industries contribute more for the growth of M2M?
The combination of low-cost “smart” connected devices with the need for better data drives M2M and Big Data. Other growth drivers includes lowering hardware costs, potential to create new business models, new products/services, downtime avoidance, and improved customer interaction.
Although internet of things can be applied across all industries, the early adopters would be retail and logistics industry with maximum M2M deployments.
How do you expect the market to evolve in the coming 5 years? What will be the next-gen technologies like?
According to a Gartner report, “By 2020, over 30 Billion connected devices will be in use.” We foresee a mature M2M market in the next 5 years, there will be more machines connected to the Internet than human beings.
Smart City market is evolving, and it will be the next big thing. Smart City involves integration of various sub-systems viz transportation, education, electric grid, entertainment, security, public services, health services etc. These technologies will facilitate social benefits to residents and sustainable economic growth.
Smartphones and Big Data will transform the M2M industry in the coming years. Growing demand for smartphones has created an ability to control a remote environment from the palm of one’s hand. Big Data will be the next frontier for innovation and productivity as data spurs from everywhere: from sensors to social network, and enterprises are bombarded with growing data with diverse magnitude, multiplicity, and speed.
Rajani Baburajan