The Battle of the Platforms is an opportunity for M2M platform providers to size up against others in the industry. Eleven companies battled it out at the 2014 M2M Evolution Conference & Expo, and five are coming home with awards in their hands, recognizing platforms for Enabling Non-Platform Technology, Application Development, Provisioning Solution, Vertical Platform and Horizontal Platform.
“The amount of demonstrations at the awards that were in real-time involved multiple devices and provided true analytics was truly impressive,” said Carl Ford, CEO of Crossfire Media. “We had a lot of new entrants to the Battle of the Platforms, indicative of the M2M ecosystem growth. In some cases, these are companies that came from vertical marketplaces that didn’t think of themselves as M2M but now realize M2M is a great way for them to explore new opportunities and show their relevance for existing marketplaces.”
Enabling Non Platform Technology: Xively
This award was given to the platform that provides tools for analytic and support for multiple platforms. Xively is comprised of three different components: Platform, services and partners. It offers an open-standard API and libraries that connect thousands of platforms. The workbench allows users to see communication through secure channels and troubleshoot that centrally. Its remote access technology enables IP connections, and then draws communication together to a managed peer-to-peer (P2P) connection, offering a whole new level of scalability. Chad Jones, VP of product strategy at Xively, explained that the company is helping build for an interconnected future – users can share APIs, security, object directory and grouping capabilities and communicate with two different devices securely.
Application Development: ILS Technology
This award recognized the platform that ties a solution to business intelligence and supports innovation to third parties. ILS Technology aims to reduce three things when it comes to M2M applications: Time, risks and complexity. Its deviceWISE platform powers numerous applications, including fleets, restaurants, buildings, pipelines, data centers, factories and more, enabling them to all become smart. It also offers the Telit global footprint, which expects to onboard 100 million devices in the next five years. ILS works with the TIA TR-50 standard, enabling companies to future-proof their applications. Charlie McNiff, working with business development at ILS, explained there are three reasons companies look to implement M2M applications: To generate new revenue streams, to save money and to be compliant.
Provisioning Solution: RACO Wireless
RACO was recognized for its support for multiple carriers, but in fact, John Horn discussed the importance not necessarily of the number of carriers, but having enough for RACO’s footprint. “We’re not in a race to see how many carriers we can get – it doesn’t make it easy to have 50 carriers,” he said. RACO works with Telefonica, T-Mobile, Sprint, Rogers and EE. The company supports more than 1,000 solutions partners today, and it showcased its Omega Management Suite, which is a subscriber management platform that offers a Web-based interface and APIs. The company also showcased its provisioning engine, emphasizing the importance of having the same experience regardless of who the carrier is.
Vertical Platform: Skypatrol
This award was given to Skypatrol for its platform being tightly tied to a specific vertical and strong analytics for the vertical. In this case, the specific vertical was the vehicle finance world. Its Defender 2.0 platform sets out to offer collection tools, mitigate risks and find cars when they need to be repossessed. The platform is designed to serve everyone from the CEO of a bank down to an entry level collector. For collections use, devices are set to locate themselves every 25 hours, which will go into a “Quick Report” tab and allow users to look at location history. Every time that vehicle hits 25 hours, users can see from the point of installation where that device spends most of its time in relation to hours and minutes and puts it in a top 10 category (where you work and where you live should be in the that group). This can be beneficial not only for locating people but also as a verification tool – 60 days after a loan, you can confirm whether people work and live where they said they did. Skypatrol also covered geofencing, which provides an invisible perimeter around a particular country that allows lenders to manage whether cars end up in shady mechanic shops or impound lots.
Horizontal Platform: ILS Technology
ILS Technology was also recognized for its platform for broad vertical markets. Its customers include Belgacom M2M factory, ITOCHU Techno-Solutions, Caterpillar, Emerson (News 
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The other Battle participants included Teezle TMatics, which cuts costs and complexity for M2M applications and has been in the space since 1999; PositionLogic, which offers intelligent tracking software and B2B location-based services and is a sister company to RACO Wireless; Pegasystems, an enterprise software company and intelligent process automation provider; Nwave, an M2M telecom platform; Meshify, a provider of hardware and cloud-based infrastructure for monitoring and controlling devices; Exosite, which takes a micro-vertical engine approach to build a horizontal platform that can be used across diverse industries; and Echelon, a provider of the IzoT Platform for the Industrial Internet of Things.
The Battle of the Platform featured the most number of platforms to date, and it kicked off M2M Evolution Conference & Expo, which includes a week full of conference panel sessions, keynote presentations, workshops, exhibit hall demonstrations, networking opportunities and more.
Edited by
Brooke Neuman
