IT Enterprise Objectives

IT Enterprise Objectives vary over time, across industries, market conditions, etc, however if you were to try connect the dots and draw similarities a pattern emerges.

• Lowering costs of software development, 
• Lowering costs of IT support and maintenance,
• Lowering overall cost of IT ownership,
• Increase portability of applications,
• Improve interoperability between systems and networks,
• Engage in open systems,
• Improve the ease at which systems components can be exchanged or upgraded,
• Maximize ROI on existing infrastructure,
• Minimize risk on future investments,
• Reduce complexity in IT infrastructure 
• Improve ability to address enterprise wide issues, such as regulatory compliance and security,
• Improve overall IT operations efficiency,
• Improve the flexibility to make, buy or outsource IT solutions,
• Simplify buying decisions,
• Improve procurement speed,
• Integrated, heterogeneous multi vendor support network.

How to Prepare for a Presentation in a Competitive Bid Process:

There are many great rules, guidelines and best practices within each organization, unless you have a single product or service it is difficult to have just one template that fits all scenario's.

1. Stakeholders
One of the key aspects of the preparation is to identify the stakeholders, a general template here could be that of an off the shelf influential roles and their concerns, because it is these concerns that are at the root of the requirements called out in a RFP, to tailor them to the situation is key.

2. Creating Vantage Points
Few simple definitions to start with: 
A "View" is what you see, 
A "View point" is where you are looking from and 
A "Vantage Point" is a perspective that determines what you see.

It is important to recognize stakeholders have different views, an executive strategic interests are different from an operations day to day tactical view, they will require two different view points  despite the overlap and alignment with organization objectives.

Vendors must create different views of the solution, that which are more meaningful, that which can be communicated and that which can be easily understood by the specific stakeholders, so they can verify that the system will address their concerns.

An organization must create a library of such view points that can be tailored to specific pursuit requirements on the go.

3. Recommended Steps

• Refer to existing library of view points
• Select key stakeholders who will be participating in the oral presentation
• Analyze their concerns and document them (seek alignment)
• Select appropriate view points 
• Generate views of the system using the selected viewpoints as templates.

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Machine to Machine (M2M) Solution Components

Here are different elements that make up a M2M solution, either to serve as a checklist for a business case or for sheer interest to wrap your head around M2M.

• Device Management
• Chip-sets, sensors, modules, battery life 
• Integrated or external SIM
• Remote updates to keep firmware and configuration current
• Remote break-fix capability, collect diagnostics to perform analytic's
• Billing, warranty and repairs 
• Re-purpose and/or recycle at end of life
• Vendors ability to provision locally across the globe 
• Vendors ability to expand and scale 
• Remote device activation, deactivation, wipe, lock and unlock 
• A cloud based real-time self-care administration interface


• Connectivity
• Software based SIM cards
• Wireless technology used, global coverage and reliability of the network  
• Consumption based and flat fee rate plans
• An administration interface for management, billing and reporting

• Software (Options)
• COTS: An off the shelf software that can be customized to requirements. If the number of customization's required are too many and there is not a product off the shelf that comes close, custom development would probably be best.
• Custom development by specialized vendors: This option is preferred over developing one in-house because preexisting skills, development environment, tools, code libraries, prepackaged functions and vendor M2M knowledge could reduce time, costs and complexity of the implementation.
• Virtualized and cloud enabled.
• License management for software, middleware and database components.
• Release and deployment management, service validation and testing.
• Software management contracted either internally, to the developer or to a 3rd vendor. Management includes monitoring, incident, problem and change management.


• Infrastructure
• Scalable, reliable and secure data center
• LAN, computing hardware and operating system
• Management of the operating system and operation of middleware and database components. Management includes monitoring, incident, problem and change management.
• Additional data collection points across the globe to minimize communication latency.

• Helpdesk
• User access management, customer support center.

While majority of the elements can be purchased as a commodity, software remains the differentiator, this is where magic happens, dollars get spent, the business cases get realized and new insights are revealed.

There are a number of vendors who are strong in one solution area, either expanding to new solution areas or integrating vendors to provide an end to end service. There are a wide range of plug-n-play type prepackaged solutions available in the market, e.g. asset tracking from mobile carriers like AT&T and Vodafone, etc.

There are also industry specific solutions for automotive, health, energy and utilities, transportation and logistics, manufacturing, retail, security, etc. While service providers big and small are rushing to provide M2M services with prepackaged use cases for industries, every company should invest in its own investigation on how M2M can enhance its current processes and what new possibilities it could reveal before engaging on commercial use cases.

Machine to Machine (M2M) Track and Trace Solution Overview

Pack the tracking device inside the box or container within your freight. stay informed about the condition and location of cargo in transit, using a cloud based visualization software on the conditions surrounding your valuable cargo. You can view and control a rich array of information about your shipment, and set customizable alerts and geo-fences to make you aware of events so that you can quickly respond to disruptions.

Tangible Benefits:

• Improve visibility of high value cargo in the supply chain
• Instantly respond to time-critical and temperature-sensitive situations to mitigate risks of delays and disruptions.
• Intrusion detection
• Quality assurance
• Regulatory and compliance requirement
• Chain of custody
• Self service monitoring and tracking
• Receive alerts via email or text when set thresholds are breached or at set intervals
• Eliminate the expense, time and effort of manually searching for and replacing lost shipments.
• Improve your customer communication and service levels via access to near real-time data.
• Optimize your supply chain process, using historical data to improve control over transportation operations.

Features:

Track your assets over Land, Sea and Air (Radio off mode with offline monitoring).

• Coverage:
• Local, regional and global coverage.
• Cargo does not matter:
• Living and perishable cargo
• Electronics, high fashion and art cargo
• Machines parts, oil and gas cargo, etc.
• Size
• Dimensions of a pencil box or 1.5x – 2x the size of an Iphone 5.
• Weight 10oz to 15 oz or 1.5x – 2 x the weight of an Iphone 5.
• Packaging
• Water-resistant,
• Shock and tamper proof and are
• Capable of remote diagnostics and software updates.
• Typical sensor features that can be monitored include:
• Location
• Temperature
• Humidity
• Pressure
• Light
• Shock
• Vibration
• Motion

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Machine to Machine (M2M) Use Cases

M2M Use Cases are many, here are a few for illustration purposes.

Track and Trace Connected Assets: Sense and respond to events, collect and analyze key data and accelerate business value, reducing costs, increase service reliability and improved regulatory compliance. Reported information includes global information on location, environmental factors, tampering, humidity and temperature conditions.

Fleet Management: Increase productivity, lower fuel costs, reduce vehicle wear and tear, improved vehicle up-time, strengthened compliance reporting, improved worker safety.

Industrial Automation: Maximize machine uptime, reduce power consumption, minimize meantime to repair (MTTR), improved product quality.

Farming: Improved decisions on harvesting, irrigation, seeding, reduced frequency of field visits saving time and money, improved prices for crops.

Mining: Eliminates expenses for extensive cabling, reduces costs by minimizing on-site visits, lessens environmental issues, potential avoidance of catastrophic events, improved regulatory reporting.

Building Automation: Reduced energy costs, future proof building management systems, communications between disparate systems.

Healthcare: Reduce costly re-admissions, improve patient independence, maximize regulatory compliance, improve patient outcomes, reduce equipment downtime, reduce replenish-able inventory costs.

Machine to Machine (M2M) An Introduction

An Introduction: Mankind put two and two together as early as 19^th century, Telemetry as it was first called, is an automated communication process by which data is collected at remote or inaccessible points and transmitted to receiving equipment for monitoring.

Over time the technology used for sending, measuring, transmitting and analyzing evolved, for e.g., the sensors sensitive and accuracy improved, transmission evolved from hardwired phone lines to radio signals, in-memory analytics made real-time response possible, the power required to run the unit decreased, batteries got better, possibilities multiplied.

The combination of wireless sensors, the internet and advanced analytics on computers together created the technology that we all have come to know as M2M (Machine to Machine Communication) and IoT (The Internet of Things).

Example: Let us take the case of a transportation company that wants to track and secure precious cargo as it is being transported across the country, you would place sensors within the container that will send real-time data to a GSM mobile network, which in turn is connected to the internet. These incoming streams of data are picked up by a specialized software that can pinpoint the cargo in real-time on a map on your screen.

Now consider placing a temperature and humidity sensors alongside to transport sensitive cargo, which measure and provide real-time feedback that you can act on before it is too late. This feedback loop makes M2M invaluable in a number of industries and ensures fewer dollars are wasted. e.g., vehicle telematics, consumer electronics, healthcare, point-of-sale, fleet tracking, asset monitoring, energy,resource distribution and utilization, research, wildlife, etc.

IoT plans to take M2M to a whole another level by giving an unique identifier (IP Address) to all objects including animals and people, and the ability to transfer data similar to an M2M solution over a network with zero human interaction. 

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