I attended the M2M United show last week outside Chicago. Unlike the Remote Device Monitoring and Management show which is focused on remote service, the M2M show is very broad both in terms of problems being solved and technology required. A good representation of that breadth is seen in the M2M Value Chain Awards given out on the last night of the show. The awards were broken down into two main categories; industry specific solutions, and application areas. Included in Industries were Energy and Utilities, Water and Wastewater, Retail, and Manufacturing. Included in Applications were Fleet Management, Location-Based Services, Automatic Vehicle Location, M2M in Action and Smart Services. Most of these solutions involved a wireless connection to a remote asset.

Axeda's customer Varian Medical Systems was recognized in the Smart Services category for their SmartConnect remote service program. Smart Service is another industry term for the remote service software market that we are a part of. Congratulations to the Varian team on receiving this award!

Most of the other categories had solutions that were provided by multiple vendors because of complexity of wireless connections. In the wireless world you need special hardware to make the wireless data connection, and a phone carrier network to connect the data to your network to get the data. We are working with partners to simplify wireless connections, and expect to see much more of these type solutions in the future.