New M2M trade body, International M2M Council to launch this week at CTIA 2013 in Vegas

IMC aims to promote the business value of M2M across key vertical markets including automotive, logistics, energy, healthcare and public infrastructure – to make the benefits more visible to users and new adopters. The council will reportedly be dedicated to easing integration, reducing total cost of ownership and improving speed-to-market for M2M services via periodic benchmarking studies, deployment case studies, focus groups and standards building.

The IMC is a new trade organisation for the machine-to-machine communications industry – it will stand for M2M as its own global industry, not a single product category or vertical industry. Its aim will be to support industry efforts to increase deployment volumes by offering member services that connect M2M solutions providers with adopters of M2M technology and support their evolving needs. (http://www.im2mc.org/)

The IMC will “support industry efforts to increase deployment volumes, by offering member services that connect M2M solutions providers with adopters of M2M technology and support their evolving needs”. It will do this through a four-pronged strategy:

• Awareness: Promoting M2M’s application in  automotive, logistics, energy, healthcare, public infrastructure and other verticals – increasing M2M’s visibility to adopters.
• Metrics: Setting benchmarks and sharing best practices learned through case studies and focus groups. It also aims to create best-practice certifications and business-level standards.
• Policy: Ensuring solution providers and M2M adopters share a common view of the future. Plus it will present unified objectives to regulatory bodies on issues like security and privacy.
• Training & Education: Establish ingprofessional curricula to educate the industry, and encourage movement between M2M industry sectors.

Wireless M2M services provider, KORE Telematics has announced it has been selected to join the IMC. KORE Telematics’ president and COO, Alex Brisbourne will join its Board of Governors.

“The M2M service delivery chain has become considerably crowded over the past few years,” said Alex Brisbourne. “The multiplicity of components and parties — a collection of many niche businesses, really — can make it difficult for even the most astute business to navigate through an entire M2M solution, end to end. We recognise the need to simplify as an industry, and are proud to join with a high-quality, diverse group of providers to help adopters achieve quicker time to services and profitability.”

“We are excited to welcome KORE Telematics as an initial member of the IMC and look forward to putting the company’s long-standing expertise in M2M on display for the market,” said Keith Kreisher, executive director of IMC. “The KORE suite of global device connectivity offerings is a natural fit with our mission to help adopters build and deploy end-to-end M2M and Internet-of-Things (IoT) solutions with fewer associated time, cost and risk parameters.”

KORE is the world’s largest wireless network provider dedicated to the rapidly expanding global M2M communications market. It provides unified control and management for cellular and satellite network service delivery in more than 180 countries worldwide, and enables its application, hardware and wireless operator partners to efficiently deliver M2M solutions for connected devices across the globe. M2M applications in industries as diverse as healthcare, utilities, enterprise IT, transaction processing and fleet management are supported by the KORE network to deliver operational efficiencies and cost-savings.