The Future Of Machines

Many areas of the economy and life are barely conceivable today without machine-to-machine (M2M) communication. In business it simplifies workflows and makes processes leaner and new business models possible. M2M connects our world; be it in the energy sector, in healthcare or in the logistics industry, M2M solutions are part and parcel of our everyday life and more companies are connecting their facilities to the Internet to enable remote monitoring and control.

M2M communication is not a recent innovation, however. It was the subject of much hype in the late 1990s. But solutions failed to sell due to high prices, the state of technological development and the lack of practical experience. However a few years ago a number of factors came together; the technology was now mature, solutions had made progress and the market recognised the benefits of M2M. Global sales today of M2M devices, modules, services and data tariffs amount to around £129 billion. Machina Research market analysts expect them to increase to £0.7 trillion by 2022.

In the years ahead, this growth will increasingly be determined by customer demand and customer benefits. Industry in particular has discovered the opportunities that M2M offers. It was especially clear at this year’s Hannover Fair, the world’s most important industrial trade show, that the M2M industry is rising to the challenge. Many exhibitors at the event promised under the headings Integrated Industry, Industry 4.0 and Smart Factory nothing less than the fourth industrial revolution. However, critics of this hype merely see it as an inevitable stage of evolution in the use of electronics and information technology.

Customer-Specific Mass Production

In the factory of the future, industrial processes will be determined by so-called Cyber-Physical Production Systems (CPPS). In CPPS, machines, storage systems and operational resources will exchange information autonomously, responding to specified parameters and controlling each other reciprocally. CPPS will thereby create a smart factory with totally new opportunities. Products will be able to communicate. They will inform the machines of their individual product data. The machines in turn will then initiate the appropriate processes. A good example is a beverage manufacturer equipping its bottles with NFC (near field communication) tags. Information stored in the tag includes the beverage that is to be filled into the bottle, whether it is to be closed with a cork or a screw top and how the bottle is to be labelled.



Instead of manufacturing products uniformly and in bulk, companies will be able to adapt their products to customer wishes inexpensively. So the beverage manufacturer might, for example, offer his customers a platform for their individual wishes. On it, users could create their own mixed beverages, choose their own bottle designs and fit them out with a label of their own design. Companies could also couple their production to demand in a connected factory. If, for instance, a new beverage is marketed, production processes will scale up or down automatically in line with demand. The manufacturer will no longer need to store products in such large quantities. Customers will benefit from greater product availability and freshness.

In Industry 4.0, demand-oriented production will have many other repercussions. It will be easier for companies to manage their resources and their energy consumption. The beverage manufacturer’s filling machines will only operate when there is a genuine demand. Surplus production will decline significantly. It will, however, be a while before companies and customers benefit from the fourth industrial revolution. Research is still required at many points. There must, for example, be more specific detail about how CPPS is to interact with employees and players such as customers or suppliers.

Mobile Enablers

In the future, automation, electronics, information technology and telecommunications must cooperate better, and mobile network operators (MNOs) will have an important role to play. In what has so far been a very fragmented market, they will increasingly serve as a link between the many small software and hardware providers. Companies can then jointly offer customers end-to-end applications from a single source. The first MNOs, such as Deutsche Telekom, have already launched international partner programs with this in mind.

Partners are often well informed about their regional or national markets, so projects can take regional customer requirements into account. This year, for instance, the automobile industry is the main market driver for M2M solutions in Europe due to new regulations such as the EU’s decision to make an automatic emergency call system mandatory in all new cars manufactured from 2015. If there is an accident the so-called eCall will alert the rescue services automatically. To comply with requirements, car makers are increasingly fitting out assembly-line vehicles with embedded SIM chips. Customers who increasingly want their cars to be equipped with telematics and entertainment offerings are exerting a parallel influence. In a few years’ time the connected car will be a part of our daily lives.



In the future, M2M solutions will increasingly define the energy sector too. The volatile local feed-in of regenerative energy requires an intelligent infrastructure: a smart grid. Automatic load management will prevent power outages when there is no wind, for example, while washing machines can be run when there is surplus capacity in the grid. Consumers can be incentivised by lower tariffs. That in turn presupposes smart meters. An EU directive for the internal electricity market requires member-states to adopt smart metering systems and equip around 80 percent of households with smart meters by 2020.

Technological development now enables increasing usage of M2M solutions. Low prices and low energy consumption make using M2M of interest in more and more industries. In the years ahead, solutions specialised in simple tasks like tracking and tracing or status reports will spread, driving demand for more complex solutions.

Horizontal Middleware

In software, new middleware platforms that constitute the horizontal application layer are currently taking shape. These platforms will assist developers with cross-industry tasks. Developers can use them to set up heterogeneous sensor networks for industrial monitoring, for example. The platforms can also map other aspects such as security and over-the-air updates. Horizontal middleware solutions of this kind are a part of M2M’s software-related progress. The aim is to map as much as possible via uniform standards so that the vertical, industry-specific aspects of a solution only come into play at the end of the development process. In short, if the wheel does not need to be re-invented every time, M2M solutions can be offered faster in future, and at even more favourable prices.

Many companies need not only low-cost M2M solutions but also solutions that can be used transnationally. This demand has consequences for MNOs. To ensure international availability and common communication standards, they will need to cooperate much more closely in the future. The Global M2M Association (GMA) is one of the first cooperation ventures. Its members include Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom and TeliaSonera. The GMA’s aim is to improve the quality of service and standards for M2M communication. To do this, the cooperation partners are for example ensuring the interoperability of their networks and harmonising their software interfaces (APIs).

Security Is Key

Another example is the M2M Alliance, to which nearly all of the major European suppliers — from providers to integrators — now belong. It too aims to develop more uniform standards and platforms. In the years ahead more companies will join forces in strategic alliances to determine the future of the market.



MNOs have an important role to play not only in strategic development of the market but also on the key issues of security and data protection. Sustainable market development will only be possible once security and data protection are assured. The MNOs have long had these items on their agenda and offer a wide range of certificated encryption processes. Users must, however, pay attention to security and data protection not only in connection with connectivity but also data storage. Companies like Deutsche Telekom use secure data centres in Europe where statutory data protection requirements are especially demanding.

Big Data, Bigger Benefits

Further challenges lie ahead in handling data. Enormous amounts of data from all areas of industry and life will be involved in the future. M2M is one of the drivers of Big Data. Facebook already handles more than 500 terabytes of data per day. That corresponds to over 100,000 DVDs. Stacked high they would be 30 metres taller than Big Ben.

For the most part, queries in respect of such amounts of data have hitherto been limited to individual values. Physicians, for example, monitor diabetic patients’ blood glucose levels that are read, relayed by a mobile wireless network and archived. The difficulty with this is that in order to analyse the data, the context must first be known. Furthermore, more extensive findings require many different inter-related parameters to be analysed. That is why MNOs like Deutsche Telekom collaborate with a variety of Big Data specialists.

In addition, companies must clarify when to analyse which data. Current approaches mostly provide for a retroactive analysis of data records. But relevant patterns are then often identified too late. In the future, real-time analysis will become more important. The methods used examine incoming data streams in actual time and search them for patterns. That makes the deployment of self-learning systems possible. They recognise, for example, wear and tear of generators in wind turbines or pump systems’ motors. They observe processes by means of sensor technology over a long period and thereby identify even gradual, creeping changes. Companies that use this technology will, in the future, be able to offer their customers a proactive service. Outages of plant and machinery could thereby be reduced significantly. Procedures of this kind are currently undergoing trials. So companies will need to consider in the medium term where real-time data analysis is required and where retroactive data analysis will suffice.

Connecting previously separate data silos promises great potential. It is almost impossible to predict what possibilities will emerge from analysing these merged data records for, say, epidemiology or climate research, but here too a number of questions must be clarified. Who owns the data? Who can use it and under which conditions? How do we handle a clash between data protection and the interests of society in combating epidemics?

Answers to these questions can only be found in discourse between companies, politics and public opinion, so the future will continue to be exciting. Right now, only the beginnings of many developments are apparent. That is why all market participants should make use of the opportunity to play an active role in helping to shape future developments.