M2M - the internet of things

M2M is a business model in telecommunications, where automated devices (machines) talk to each other. So M2M stands for "Machine - to - Machine". General information about M2M can be found at wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_to_Machine .

This market segment is relative small related to other telecom segments, but continuously growing. Its market participants and technologies are totaly different from those found at mobile telephony, broadband, mobile marketing, mobile payment and so on.

Our group is intended to be an open place for the critical dialouge about the benefit M2M solutions provide to its user segments. We like to present successful implementations and look forward to here about user experiences, too.

The role M2M is said to play in near future can be assumed from our subtitle "the internet of things".

The market participants on supplier side belong to several elements in the value chain, e.g. electronics, mobile devices, networks, middleware, application solutions and robotics. On the other side Users can be found in logistics, utilities, security, production and so on.

Several technologies are used in M2M solutions, such as telecommunication networks (POTS, ISDN, DSL, DVB-T, SMS, GPRS, UMTS, WLAN, WiMax, Bluetooth, Zigbee) and Sensorics like RFID, NFC, GPS and Galileo.

About the Supporters:
The industrie initiative m2m-alliance e.V. http://www.m2m-alliance.de was founded in order to bring the participants in M2M market into a close dialouge with each other and promote the use of M2M in general. In combination with trade fairs and public relations, this group at Xing is seen as a cornerstone for the enabling of M2M.
The Moderator Mathias Reinis with his consulting company Concept Factory http://www.concept-factory.de is one of the founding members of the M2M-Alliance.