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Mobile market liberalization may bring about a boom in M2M services and real productivity growth!
It is a fact that most of us hesitate when it comes to turning to a 100% mobile (online) world, as up to now fares have been really high. And, while we hesitate, all the related services fail to take off. Once we receive attractive offers (Thank you Mr Niel  ), we’ll most likely have fewer scruples about taking the leap: 3G tablets, 3G ultra-light laptops, etc. Thus, we could be connected “full time” to social networks, to our company’s information systems (IS), to objects (M2M), etc.
The attractiveness of mobile prices will be reflected on full data offers in the field of connected objects (M2M or Machine to machine), which will eliminate the last but one obstacle to M2M take off: its price.
Why did I say “the last but one obstacle”?
Just because the last obstacle is the scope of its use.
It is not enough to be connected to an IS, the information must be “contextualized” depending on the user who looks at it. There mustn’t be any additional effort to find the information, to use it together with others and to process it. The connection must benefit its productivity and work performance.
Let’s look at it by using an example: an electricity meter sets back its index in an IS of a company in charge of the building where the meter is placed. The IS has integrated the information in the BI device database.
In fact, one cannot know if there is a consumption peak until the facilities manager or the production manager (for factories) does not log in to the BI device (or, at best, to the intranet).
The “practical” benefit would be that the information is analyzed by the IS within the building’s production chain (automatically), translated in simple terms and posted on the social network and on the wall:
– for the facilities manager: “Current electricity over-consumption due to production increase: for more details, click on the following link.”
– for the production manager: “Production growth has lead to an increase in electricity consumption: for more details, click on the following link.”
– for the commodity manger: “Production growth has lead to an increase in electricity consumption. Given the production forecasts for the following 3 months, you should consider renegotiating the contract with the electricity supplier: for price simulations, click on the following link.”
Does this look like a dream come true?
It is not a dream, but the reality we can nowadays achieve with the means (software and hardware) available to us and at reasonable prices.
Mobile practices emerging from e-commerce
Following the E-Commerce trade show I recently attended in Paris, I could get an overview of mobile practices related to e-commerce. It is all about context and simplicity.
Let us recall the context in which we use our mobiles phones.
We use our mobile phones in all situations and generally while we’re doing something else such as queuing, drinking coffee, eating in a restaurant, shopping (for instance, to check the ingredients for a recipe), attending a particularly boring meeting, in restrooms, etc.
In a nutshell, wherever we need to kill 2 minutes of our time. And here is what we do during these 2 minutes: we check our e-mails, our social networks, we surf the Internet and we play.
In order to remain in this instant context (2 minutes), the more direct and intuitive the ‘apps’ (mobile applications) are, the more we use them.
And yet, the act of buying is serious and composed: it is about money and, in general, the amounts are not small!
Unlike online (web) and in-store shopping, most of the mobile phone shopping is related to immediate consumption: logos, ring tones, game apps, etc. Everything with “transparent” prices such as 0,79€ or below 5€.
How could we associate the serious composed act of buying with the instant use of mobile phones?
We would have to fill useless time (queue) and to preserve a sense of emergency (immediate). There are various means to achieve this: geolocation for contextualizing the content (narrowing the choices/catalog), proposing the right promotion or the good deal related to it (and specifying it), as well as simplifying the payment methods (e.g. just one “click” away thanks to bank detail memorization). Good back office is a must for an e-commerce application to be efficient.
Therefore, creating a good application (in my opinion) requires the following:
- validating the use context to allow the development of the most appropriate storyboard: for “dull” times (queue), social engagements, in a shop, etc.
- establishing the advantages the client/mobile phone user gets from this application: better product information, reminder, cost savings, comfort or entertainment, pleasure/user friendliness, etc.
A few specific examples:
Let’s mention several companies whose revenue generated by mobile phones is on the rise: Ventes privées, with 7% of its revenue coming from mobile phones; Voyages-SNCF, with 3%, E-bay, with 1.5% of which 60% are additional sales (where the last bid has been made via mobile phone).
And here are several examples of specialized mobile applications:
- Starbucks Café: you can order your coffee with your mobile phone while queuing (use of geolocation), you can even pay/validate before you get to the cash register if you are registered with this store.
- Leclerc: you can compare the price of a product with the Leclerc price via its barcode (using the smart phone camera).
- Castorama: by taking a picture of a product in the Castorama catalog, you could check its availability and the opening hours of the nearest store.
Will the French power network become truly “smart” by 2018?
An electric power network breaks down into the following components:
- Energy production: nuclear power stations, hydraulic power stations, thermal power stations, wind farms, solar farms
- Transport: the transport of electricity includes very high voltage, high voltage, medium voltage and low voltage (LV)
- Distribution: the selling of electricity to users/consumers
- Services provided to users/consumers (but also to producers): the last element of the “Smart Grid” which should provide a better follow-up of consumption trends in order to optimize them.
A “smart” network is a communicating network (in both directions: producers towards consumers, including transport) which offers new services (optimizing production/consumption, self-regulations, supervision etc.). This “Smart Grid” allows to solve certain network management problems like consumption peaks, the request to suppress consumption in case of underproduction, the fact that renewable energies are intermittent. It also provides benefits like follow-up automation, the possibility to set up a pricing system based on real consumption, maintenance cost reduction (avoiding useless trips with the electric company vans).
According to Jean-Marie Bernard (ErDF – the French power distribution network) and Olivier Jehgl (EDF – the leading French electricity producer), who spoke during the conference on the energy/telecom convergence organized by ASPROM on 06-07/04/2011, the production and transport to the Low Voltage transforming station are already “smart”. But, just like with the local telecom loop, it is the last kilometres which are not “smart”. In fact, in order to have a “smart” network, the 35 million French homes need to be equipped with a new intelligent meter, which is capable of quickly interacting and communicating information as well as receiving orders or pricing information. This intelligent meter is called LINKY. It contains an electric meter connected to a monitoring module that communicates in CPL (only with ErDF), a USB port on its front side, and can be equipped with an additional communication module (radio frequency, GPRS etc.). I said that it “can be equipped”, as for the time being the dedicated slot remains empty. Young start-ups, as well as major companies are ready to fill this gap and thus offer services which are mainly related to consumption monitoring and optimization. This should really set going the “smart home” market (home automation 2.0).
In short, we are technologically ready.
A test involving 300,000 LINKY meters is currently being carried out in Lyon and Tours. This new Machine to Machine (M2M) network has transmitted the first issues: a fault on the connection between the meter and the LV station has been communicated by the meter, which allowed to perform a targeted and quick action.
ErDF is waiting for the “go-ahead signal” from the public authorities so that it may deploy the 34 million LINKY meters by the end of 2018, at a rate of 30-35,000 meters a day.
Why the public authorities? Because the Smart Grid requires support from the public authorities and (EU) institutions. As the necessary investment is substantial, it can be made possible only if it is imposed through laws/regulations. The EU demands that the European power network become “Smart Grid” by 2018.
Public authority is equivalent to political decision. The latter may take a great deal of time as the government must find the most suitable moment between the current events and the presidential elections, in order to take full advantage of the impact of this decision.
This is what has triggered my question: Will our infrastructure be ready for 2018?
Embedded World 2011: 3rd and last day at the trade show
Thomas Wendel, Pierre Jean Cayzac and I have been joined by Sophie Lelarge. We are therefore leaving the trade show on a high note, with an increased number of visits: 9 potential customers who are very interested in our business model, our offices and our research tax credit agreement. We have also gathered information on the exhibitors’ latest developments, like: QT, QNX, Windows Embedded, IS2T, SYSGO, Xiling, RadCase, Magillen, LabView, MathWorks and so on. The trade show has once again lived up to its promises!
As far as I am concerned, I have noticed a clear tendency towards the interoperability of embedded systems, which are increasingly modular and can easily be reused. The Hardware/Software boundary is becoming dimmer and dimmer with the powerful arrival of FPGA-based solutions.
Embedded World: Pentalog is presenting its range of Embedded services
Pentalog, the European leading provider of offshore / nearshore IT services in the field of software engineering and embedded electronics, will participate once again this year in the Embedded World trade show which will be held between March 1st and 3rd.
Embedded World is the greatest trade show dedicated to embedded technologies. More than 800 exhibitors are already referenced.
Pentalog will present its entire Embedded Systems offer:
- Product design and modeling
- Embedded systems development and maintenance
- Application development for mobile phones (iPhone, Android, Symbian and Windows Phone)
- Tests, qualification and functional validation
- Mechanics
- Chip Design
Thomas Wendel, project director, and I invite you to meet us in our stand no. 379, Hall 9 in Nuremberg, Germany.
Don’t hesitate to visit us!
Why choose Pentalog for outsourcing your business processes (BPO)?
This is a question that is often asked when we present our BPO (business process outsourcing) offer.
The main arguments that I highlight are the following:
Recognized expertise in managing outsourced projects since 2000.
Services carried out by multilingual teams: French, English, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Romanian, Vietnamese, Italian etc.
Development teams capable of taking full advantage of automation and information processing support technologies: see our IS (Information Systems) and ES (Embedded Systems) offers.
A proven quality system that was ISO 9001 certified in 2008.
Very competitive prices
A clear and transparent follow-up of our activities, accessible through a web interface.
A commercial base which is established in France, Germany, Israel, Romania, Moldova and Vietnam, as close to our clients as possible.
Perfect knowledge of the market context of each country and ability to advise the client as to the outsourcing process (advantages, limitations)
Highly standardized human production methods meeting high quality demands, while offering numerous career opportunities.
Young employees, both in age and mind, who show responsiveness, enthusiasm and an ability for innovation.
And also an experienced management team offering moderation and realism.
Don’t hesitate to take a look at our success stories and contact us so that we may study your requirements and find the most appropriate solution together.
Consult our BPO offer.
The Cloud market: be careful not to miss its structure!
On Monday evening I attended a G9+ round table at the French business school ESSEC Paris about Cloud and SaaS: “A revolution or just a good resolution?” The objectives were to clarify the Cloud jargon (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, Private Cloud etc.), to make an assessment on the current and future market and on SaaS practices.
Providers such as Microsoft France (MS), Google, NEOCLES – the virtualization subsidiary of Orange Business Services (OBS), ESDI, BeezBox, Aragon-eRH intervened with end clients like Chronopost, ESSEC and Lyonnaise des eaux.
The audience and I were offered a glimpse of the jargon definitions on the “Cloud” by Didier Krainc, the General Manager of IDC. He also presented the market situation and what it will soon come to worth (40 billion euros in 2013 in comparison to 9 at present). His presentation was short and very eloquent.
Then we were given a purely commercial presentation of the “Cloud” offers of OBS (which is more focused on virtualization than on Cloud) and of MS (a range of general applications transposed into SaaS). ESDI stated the fact that software editors who have a business model based on license selling encounter great difficulties in turning to a business model based on selling individual products or based on time spent and, and worst of all, they must take this step as soon as possible because they haven’t foreseen it.
My general impression was that the market is very promising but current offers are still far from the promises that everybody made more than a year ago:
- The most complete offers are in IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service): offering invoiced infrastructures based on the time spent or on the resources used. There are few PaaS offers, while the SaaS is not fully developed yet.
- In terms of interoperability between “Clouds”, I am under the impression that we are going back to the end of the 1990s (Ethernet vs Token Ring): large suppliers prepare an offer based exclusively on their applications while the Cloud should allow us to choose the application that suits us best, whatever its editor may be.
- As for the communication between the applications themselves: it will be easier and easier to “borrow” an application in order to accomplish a precise task, but nobody talked about the manner in which the information of this application will be transmitted to the next application in a simple and transparent way for the user.
As nobody wants to have new silos which would again block us in our choices, we must pay attention to the structuring of the Cloud market.
The round table on the SaaS was less about marketing and more end-user oriented, and focused on systems integrators. Luca S. Paderni (EMEA Google Enterprise), who intervened at this round table, didn’t talk much about his Cloud offers, as he considered that virtually everybody knew them (“we are a young company of 20,000 users”). Together with the other speakers, he presented the major changes generated by SaaS:
- The profession of systems integrator is about to change irreversibly on the main vertical markets (HR, finance, marketing, commerce, administrative, logistic): if until now 35 consultants were needed for 2 years in order to install an ERP, from now on less than 10 will be needed for 3 months, and a large part of the work will be mainly carried out from a distance. The focus is no longer on infrastructure/technology, but on profession/competence (and security).
- Innovation becomes accessible faster and faster: with SaaS we are no longer talking about software version, we are talking about functions to be accepted or not and to be implemented. Validation tests are becoming crucial, as the final validation is made directly in the production phase by the end users.
- The CIO must now become more open and agree to help the business of their company go faster and further. They must facilitate exchanges within the company and monitor resources in order to invoice them internally according to the projects and the needs.
The Cloud seems to reduce deadlines, which indicates once again the importance of communication between the different players and the relevancy of information. As far as I am concerned, I think that the company’s social network is part of the answer to this last point.
See our Cloud offer on our website.
Embedded World 2010: it’s over…
3 days to present our services, contact potential clients and prospective suppliers, explaining the concept of Offshore, and how it works and discovering new products and concepts.
3 days is definitely too short!
Speaking of products and concepts, the main idea that I have retained from this trade show is that the Embedded business is turned resolutely towards the End User, to make his life and the use of new High Tech technology easier:
• The HMI has become very intuitive and clean: touch screens, motion sensors, acoustic sensors… Intel has built a wall dedicated to the customer in a store (clothing and shoes): half transparent allowing for the selection of an article in the store (as shown on the screen) and information concerning prices etc., all downloadable to your Smartphone, the other half is a touch screen to show you wearing the selected items by means of multiple cameras embedded in the wall.
• Robotics were also very present with flying cameras for video surveillance, mechanical spiders for hazardous environments, and robotic arms that can keep a stick balanced on their fingertips…
• Concrete applications in different sectors and occupations that will link computers and electronics with simplified applications (allowing the end-user to refocus on its core business and not on the need for technical knowledge of the tools): medical (patient monitoring, disability aids…), military (vision, guidance, and logistics), industry (assembly, logistics), M2M (communication and action)…
• Mobility: Smartphones were also very present at the show. All major manufacturers were fighting around the portability between Symbian, RMI, and Android. The iPhone was absent from this portability (strange isn’t it?  ).
In short, Thomas and I got back on the road to our office in Frankfurt with our heads full of images and new ideas. It is now up to us to find some way to use them!
Embedded World 2010 – Nuremberg
Embedded World 2010 started this morning and we are in full swing. The number of visitors and the number of nationalities represented are still impressive despite the crisis we are in, and far from the sluggishness announced by some people before the show.
Our stand is representative of our company’s internationalization: Thomas answering in German, Romanian and English, and I in French and English.
Below is a picture of our stand, as it was opening.
We are presenting developed solutions to our prospective customers. Energy management, Bluetooth devices and wireless solutions with ultra low electrical consumption are on the program for our visitors. And for dessert, I prepare Popcorn from my iPhone: yes, there is also an application for this!
Feel free to come and meet us at Hall 11, booth 121. We look forward to welcoming you.
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