Saturday, February 17, 2007

Making money on standards Amit at Moblize is writing a series of blog postings on generating revenue from M2M. I've never had a conversation with him about this, but I've always considered the typical M2M developers to be defining the area too narrowly. I haven't read M2M magazine for a while, but the topics seemed to focus on cellular broadband and stopped short of what makes it work--sensors (or "information gatherers") at one end and software ("information aggregators and analyzers") at the other. Hey, Amit, I'll be in Houston next week at the Fieldbus Foundation annual meeting on Thursday and don't leave until Friday afternoon. But I think his reflections on revenue hit the mark. It also fits with conversations I had with John Kowal, Jay Lee and several others this week in Orlando, that is, who can make money using things like standards and even this M2M capability? The technologies under consideration include programming standards (say, PackML, ISA95, and so on), machine data collection (say the Watchdog Agent of the Center for Intelligent Maintenance Systems, M2M, and the like), interoperability (OPC, connect to databases and more)--a lot of the stuff discussed during the various meetings and sessions at the Forum. End users want standards, interoperability, machine status and operation data collection, and many similar things. But these are costs to OEMs and technology suppliers. Perhaps an OEM (machine builder) would like to embed sensors and data aggregators in the machine that would automatically call back home to report problems. OEMs want to make money on service. End users want to avoid service. Jay Lee talked about end users using the Watchdog Agent to collect data on machine performance in order to go back and pressure OEMs about the quality of the machine--not an approach that will get OEM support. And, end users often don't want the security issues entailed with a direct connection from a machine to somewhere outside the plant (a big problem for the M2M crowd). Oh, and by the way, end users don't want to pay extra, in fact, they are looking for ways to squeeze the OEMs even more. (Disclaimer, I once was a vp of a small machine builder in charge of application engineering, sales, marketing and project management. When I say squeeze, I can still feel the pain from 20 years ago.) In order for all these technologies to really take off, someone must see a financial benefit. Who will it be? I have heard from one OEM who has used programming standards and modern programming practices along with modular machine design to reduce costs. Now that can be a competitive advantage for a while. But what about the M2M space? The way it looks now, if the end users want these things so bad, then they must require it in their specs. It would be good if they'd acknowledge that it's an added cost to the OEM and not squawk about price. Or, only let bids to those that agree. On the other hand, perhaps this is a realm for system integrators to step in--or more aptly called value added resellers. And for M2M (machines calling home with information), I think that those suppliers need to address the firewall issue--in other words they must become network  security superstars first, then sell the benefits of letting the machine data loose outside the plant. Anyway, what do you think? Who stands to make money? If no one does, will any of these initiatives succeed? 3:31:21 PM    comment []

Dealing with people Here's a charming story and some good ideas on the "no asshole" theory from the author of the book. The author makes several points, but two that struck home. First, it's everyone's responsibility to speak up and not reinforce asshole behavior wherever you are (especially in your company). And two, sometimes the person who acts that way is the person you can see in the mirror. The real genius of growing up isn't that you never act poorly--it's that you can see yourself from the outside as it were actually acting that way and then ending the behavior even while you're doing it. I previously wrote about this book here. 10:03:35 AM    comment []

Disruptive genius Cartoon from Thursday's Dilbert calendar: Dogbert the consultant: "To survive, you must create disruptive innovations that redefine the market." Wally (the lazy engineer): "Does that mean the same thing as 'Sell things that people want'?" Dogbert: "There's one big difference." Wally: "You only get paid if you say it in a funny way?" Dogbert: "I like to think I'm disruptively innovative." Sometimes we try too hard to put $50 words on common sense ideas. The real genius can explain complex ideas with words people can understand. 9:00:23 AM    comment []