Telecom equipment giant Ericsson is teaming with Swisscom to develop the machine-to-machine (M2M) market.
Swisscom will offer enterprises services to leverage efficiencies along their customers' value chain from production to distribution. Swisscom's M2M offering is based on Ericsson's Device Connection Platform, which the company says allows for cost-efficient management of a large number of connected devices and machines. The first trials will start this month, with commercial introduction scheduled for summer.
Several hundred thousand machines are already connected in Switzerland. Swisscom predicts this number to grow significantly in the coming years, and that in the long run, the addressable market will comprise up to 100 million connected devices and machines in Switzerland alone. Industries that benefit from M2M communication are typically utilities, government, transport and health care, but the potential for its use extends well beyond that.
"We are entering this partnership – in which Ericsson supports us not only with its M2M connectivity platform, but also with its extensive experience of the worldwide M2M market – with the clear ambition not only to be first in an emerging market, but also to provide our customers with the kind of superior offering they are used to from us. Our ambition is to provide enterprise customers with a scalable, easy-to-configure-and-maintain, telecom-grade solution that helps them to leverage the full potential of their M2M connectivity and gain a competitive advantage."
Swisscom says that as one of Ericsson's first Device Connection Platform customers, the carrier will have the potential to address new revenue streams. The Device Connection Platform cloud service will allow Swisscom to grow flexibly according to demand from its enterprise customers from different industries, Ericsson said. The pay-as-you-grow business model is designed to allow the operator a fast time to market. Ericsson's M2M solution is industry-agnostic, and can be adapted to different industries' and customers' needs.
"We have built out our leading position as an M2M solution provider to operators worldwide and now we are partnering with Swisscom in one of the world's first large-scale M2M market introductions," said Anders Runevad, head of Western & Central Europe, Ericsson. "We have connected billions of people to date with mobile networks. Now we are starting to address the Networked Society with our vision of more than 50 billion connected devices – primarily from M2M connectivity in all kinds of industries – by 2020 worldwide."
