As the remote service market matures, we are putting more emphasis on partnerships. Our customers more and more want our solution to be integrated with other enterprise applications. It's the logical evolution: establish connectivity, get results, then expand the benefits to more systems in the company. 
 
Yesterday we announced a new partner, MCA Solutions which provides service parts planning and optimization software. You can read more about the partnership in the press release, and learn about the benefits in an article we co-wrote for Industry Week.

In the world of telecommunications, the "last mile" refers to the problem of connecting the high speed fiber network to peoples homes. A similar problem exists for products that you want to connect for remote service initiatives that are not network enabled. The product may have rich diagnostic information, but it's only available through local interfaces or a serial port.

Our new partner Perle Systems solves this problem through a small box that connects to the serial port of a product, and also has an Ethernet connection to connect to the Internet. The Axeda Agent runs directly on the box and manages the two-way connection to the device. Once connected, it looks like any other device connected to the Axeda ServiceLink system.  Last mile problem solved!

 

With Oracle OpenWorld kicking off next week, we invited Sumair Dutta, Service Management Analyst from Aberdeen to provide his perspective on how integration with ERP & CRM solutions may help drive remote service adoption - here is what he had to say:

In Aberdeen's Strategic Service Management Research Oracle and SAP are always near the top of the list in terms of mindshare with Aberdeen's service survey audience for service management solutions. This makes sense as both firms provide the backbone ERP and CRM solutions for a large number of enterprise clients, and integration with current back-end systems is always a key factor / challenge in solution selection.

Despite, having a majority of the tools in the arsenal, we had yet to see Oracle make a big step into the Service Management space - from and end-to-end solution perspective. They seemed to back into service-related deals through their enterprise level presence and maintain a focus on enterprise asset management.

From a work order management perspective, Oracle possesses a dynamic scheduling engine from it acquisition of SPL (which had acquired Sidewinder) as well as scheduling functionality within Siebel Field Service and Oracle E-Business Suite Field Service. The company also has the components for GPS mapping with its field service integration to Google Maps, while also considering the parts management component. From a system of record point of view, its CRM solutions (primarily Siebel) have the necessary tools to adequately store and provide appropriate customer, contract and other pertinent information.

With the Oracle and Axeda partnership which was announced in June - Axeda ServiceLink integrates with Oracle® Service to add a proactive dimension to the service process. To me it indicates a stronger push into service, while continuing to address key issues in the asset management space. SAP has made similar forays.

It's possible that increasing interest from some of the larger enterprise application providers will supercharge the adoption of remote service technology as a solution class. In our research earlier this year, overall remote equipment monitoring numbers were still low, but the growth over the last twelve months has been substantial - to the tune of 41%! Perhaps a partnership such as this is validation that the remote service market needs.  

Axeda, with its On-Demand solution, is well positioned to negate some of the key challenges often associated with the adoption of remote technology. Primarily, our research shows that for Oracle customers, the Top 3 challenges preventing the acceptance of further adoption of remote solutions relate to:

• The perceived burdens put on IT to integrate remote technology
• Cost of networking assets 
• Time to implementation 

These are all challenges addressed by Axeda's experience, deployment tools and SaaS delivery model.

Time will tell. Now, if only we could remotely fix Tom Brady's knee before the end of the season!

Sumair Dutta is a Research Analyst on the Service Management team at Aberdeen. He can be reached at sumair.dutta@aberdeen.com. Some of his work is available at http://www.aberdeen.com/channel/svc.asp You can also catch Sumair at Aberdeen's Annual Chief Service Officer Summit Oct 2-3 in San Francisco.