In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M.
We're obviously a far cry from that scenario. Machine-to-machine communication is still relatively in the early stages. But technology and industry standards are starting to evolve to make it viable. Interest in M2M is also on the rise, driven largely by advances in mobile technology and wireless communication. Some have called it "The Rise of the Machines."
One recent report even predicted there will be more machines connected to the Internet in the next decade than there will be humans. That report didn't explain how we would pull off such a massive 1:1 rollout, however.
What we do now know, however, is that "In the enterprise space, M2M adoption is driven primarily by the push to improve operational efficiencies and customer experience, i.e., proactive customer service via the remote monitoring of devices," explains King-Yew Foong, an analyst with Gartner Group, in an interview. "There has been a lot of interest in M2M in the transportation, logistics, healthcare, and the utilities sectors."
Gartner Group defines M2M communications as being:
...used for automated data transmission and measurement between mechanical or electronic devices. The key components of an M2M system are: Field-deployed wireless devices with embedded sensors or RFID-Wireless communication networks with complementary wireless access includes, but is not limited to cellular communication, Wi-Fi, ZigBee, WiMAX, wireless LAN (WLAN), generic DSL (xDSL), and fiber to the x (FTTx).
Basically, M2M communications are technologies that enable both wireless and wired systems to communicate with other similar devices, on their own.
According to King-Yew:
From an infrastructure angle, the pieces are falling into place: widespread availability of mobile data services, and falling prices for wireless modules are key drivers. However, the challenge of developing viable business models, building ecosystems and security remains to be addressed. The market is very fragmented at the moment and standards need to emerge.
The good news: "Major standards development organizations have recognized the need for standards to drive M2M growth," King-Yew says. Those standards are in the works. "In the meantime, some telecom service providers have already come together to offer a common platform to gain an early initiative."
Another research company that is following the growth of M2M is Aberdeen Group. According to research associate Stuart Rowe:
With the billions of 'smart' devices that will be connected in the not-too-distant future, M2M is on an explosive growth path that will generate huge amounts of data. One can readily draw a connection between this evolution and the need to apply analytics to derive benefit from Big Data.
Telecommunications has certainly taken the lead in the M2M space. The wireless analyst firm Berg Insight recently predicted that M2M connections will grow to approximately 187 million by 2014.
Rowe predicts that M2M will ultimately touch on countless facets of business processes as it grows in popularity.
"Analytics and BI, dashboards (mobile and otherwise), central repositories for data, industry-standard protocols, and trained staff are all on the horizon for those on the path to M2M evolution," Rowe concludes.
So what's next for M2M?
"Over the next 12 months more industries will sign up, and costs will come down," Andrew Borg, research director in the Enterprise Mobility and Collaboration practice at Aberdeen Group, tells me. "We are also seeing a rise of common standards across carriers."
"One recent report even predicted there will be more machines connected to the Internet in the next decade than there will be humans."
But it is this kind of misconception that feeds the idea that devices are smart. I do not know of any humans that are connected to the internet as of yet. I also do not know of any device that I would consider smart. If you are going to discuss this, it might be best to stay away from media-hype terms and marketing speak.
I think we're leaving out a big category of M2M communication already in gear. Server to server communications. Part of the S+S (software plus services) paradigm is setting up custom servers on machines and clients that consume them. Now normally you think of this as the classic H2M (Human to machine) web browsing architecture. Or even the P2P (human to human) communication.
But with the rise of Big Data, machines, say in a banking system, are constantly exchanging information, making decisions, responding. They types of systems that run hedge funds for example, which monitor price fluxtuations in real time, faster than any human, are M2M systems.
These systems are quitely "edging us out of our niche" you might say, evolutionarily, in fact, this type of M2M -- server to server -- is really the communications that Collossus set up with its Russian counterpart. Once the link was built they shut the door on us humans and went to work. Now, imagine that happening with thousands of servers all the time. It is already happening.
It is my wildly speculative hunch that this will happen because of a massive botnet infection long before anything else like AI or thinking machines. Imagine a virus that drops a bot payload and it infects 50% of the worlds PC's. Just like for example, the flu pandemic of the 1920's. This will happen because we are allowing our universe of operating systems to become more closely aligned and therefore vulbnerable to the same attack vectors. There is not enough natural DNA mixing going on in the computer world to ensure immunity and resistance.
@Micheal P. Kassner: Thanks for the reality jolt, I missed the fact that "humans are -not -connected to the Internet".
Some Machine to Machine communications ecosystems are definitely going to come into existence and I pray that we develop them an subsequently use them wisely.
Artificial intelligence is getting the humungous popularity. The man and machine interaction is being replaced with machine and machine interaction. The robotics have deluged our lives in almost every field.
IE tweeted about Matternet today, its very related to M2M and they're doing a great job of (trying to make) an impact on society (delivering medicine with drones).
They faced some issues in the US (with the FAA) and decided to try Haiti and Dominican Republic. I really like their concept, hopefully it continues to grow.
Agreed, shehzadi. I think we are not aware how much of M2M is already taking place (i.e., the brakes and mechanics of our cars), social media, sensors, etc. That, tied with AI, is making M2M functionality an almost expected part of our lives. Hopefully, we will program and design them to function constructively. And, hopefully, we stay smarter than the machines!
As long as the M2M communication isn't shutting out us humans, I'm OK. All jokes aside, there is no doubt that we're going to see an explosion of internet enabled devices. I still think that we're going to have some connectivity issues. At some point there is going to need to be wireless technology that makes connectivity easier. It will happen, but it is going to take time.
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M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
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