Case Study: How Orange Business Services Is Building A New Machine-To-Machine Market

As the prospective growth in the number of people connected to communication networks slows, person-to-person (P2P) communication markets, such as voice, email, IM, and text, mature. So, strategists in the telecoms sector have to look for new markets, and with many more pieces of equipment across the world than people (by a factor of 8 to 1), the potential for machine-to-machine (M2M) connections has long been seen as the next big thing. Numerous barriers keep the M2M market opportunity from being realized, but Orange Business Services (OBS) is successfully developing M2M opportunities. Vendor strategists can learn six lessons from OBS's early success: 1) M2M requires a strategic call now; 2) add value and innovate; 3) specialize in industry verticals; 4) focus on the ecosystem; 5) dare to be different in your strategy; and 6) opt for open standards.