M2M and the Multiple Effect

This article will be like the start of Genesis, lacking form and substance.

The reason, I say that is I am starting to see the primordial ooze forming around me.

I am not sure if you are familiar with the concept of the “multiple”, but it’s a perspective that when invention occurs it’s impacted not by one person but the general trend in the culture that delivers a lot of innovation that should be attributed to multiple inventors and not just one person. We like to think that Morse invented the Telegraph and gave short acknowledgement of Wheatstone, but the reality is that these successes accelerate because the ooze has invention happening all around us. (For more about this concept read Malcolm Gladwell about Cameron Myhrhold in the New Yorker.)

Many friends who have been working in the VoIP industry have moved on to new things, and much of it is about machines. Now the bright shiny objects that look like they are going to give us the big bang are energy and medicine. 

However, the people I have watched move the industry are not only there; remote access and logistics has caught a lot of people’s attention including Mark Cuban’s relatives. Additionally I am seeing a lot of enterprise business intelligence software companies out of friends.

It’s this trend, I want to talk about. I am thinking that these companies that have a strong Internet communications background could be the base line for the roll ups my friends with money are seeking to invest in.

Here are some reasons, I see the ooze forming this way.

• Storm Clouds in the Cloud market.   No offense to my cloud friends, they are getting awfully crowded in their business plans and while the costs are certainly lower, so of it just looks like the Internet bubble again.
• Terminator Terminals. In the Man vs. Machine wars, I see we are not putting enough intelligence in the machines to worry that they are going to form the Terminator or Agent Smith anytime soon.

This makes me look for where the intelligence is going to be analyzed as the place where the API’s are going to form.

I am thinking, this is a trend that is going to resemble Total Managed Networks and give us a layer of element management that will be the key to the roll-ups. 

The early years of TMN gave birth to a variety of strategies but ultimately it was the network management software folks that prevailed.

I would love to hear about the developments of M2M NOCs from the integrators, since this could be another potential place for the rollups to arrive, however, from and Enterprise Resource Planning ERP perspective, they are probably the M2M equivalent. What do “WE” think?