The Vodafone/Bosch Announcement
On March 1st 2011 Vodafone and The Bosch Group announced a partnership to provide customers with an integrated M2M application platform. The partnership is targeted at providers of industrial monitoring applications, such as elevator/escalator or air conditioning unit monitoring. The partnership combines Vodafone’s “Global Data Service Delivery Platform” (GDSP) with The Bosch Group’s “Multi-Service Platform” (MSP). Together, the integrated offering will make it easier for customers to develop and deploy industrial monitoring applications incorporating cellular network connectivity.
Partnerships Are Becoming Plentiful in the M2M Market
The Vodafone/Bosch announcement is the latest in a string of partnership announcements over the past year in the field of cellular M2M platform offerings. For example, AT&T announced partnerships with Axeda, SensorLogic, and Sierra Wireless (for the AirVantage SDP) at Mobile World Congress in February 2011. Likewise, Axeda announced a partnership with Sprint in March 2010.
While many partnership announcements have involved mobile operators partnering with multiple SDP vendors, the Vodafone/Bosch announcement involves the integration of M2M service delivery platform (SDP) functionality with M2M application platform (MAP) functionality. The GDSP is an SDP that serves to optimize cellular network connectivity for the needs of M2M applications. For example, the GDSP enables customers to self-provision and manage remote devices on the cellular network in a largely automated fashion. Meanwhile, The Bosch Group’s MSP is a MAP that enables customers to develop automated workflow applications incorporating remote sensors in industrial and commercial applications.
The integration of these two platforms solves both the “connection problem” – how to connect remote M2M devices over a cellular network – and the “application problem” – how to model the application and define logic, rules, and alerts.
