The killer app for ZigBee is energy management. That's according to Bob Metcalfe, to whom I've just been talking in Boston, at a gathering of the Metro Ethernet Forum.
Metcalfe is the inventor of Ethernet, the physical underpinning of pretty much every network on the planet, from your home Wi-Fi to the high-speed interconnects used in data centres and the international links that tie the world's telecommunications together.
Metcalfe's been a partner in VC firm Polaris Ventures since 2001, and one of his current projects is Amber Wireless, a company that develops ZigBee components. "As CSR is to Bluetooth, so Amber will be to Zigbee", was his comment.
CSR? Your mobile phone probably has a CSR-branded Bluetooth chip inside it -- the company claims to dominate the market for Bluetooth silicon.
So what's ZigBee? It's a 2.4GHz wireless technology that's designed to connect embedded devices. We're talking light switches, environmental sensors, solenoids and so on -- devices that currently tend to work standalone and whose operating principles are based on whatever is programmed into them at design time.
Metcalfe's a network guy so his take is that such devices need to be connected, not just for control purposes, which was the original rationale for the development of Zigbee, but also to manage their energy consumption.
It's probably fair to say that, since customers for ZigBee are designers and manufacturers of embedded devices, unless you're one of those, chances are you won't hear much about it. But Metcalfe's argument for ZigBee's likelihood of success is that there are some 10 billion embedded devices out there -- even more than the current tally of mobile phones.
Is he right? With the world now alert to the need for energy savings, it's possible. Metcalfe freely admits that the Ethernet label is slapped for marketing reasons on pretty much any networking technology these days, so the Ethernet name has in effect acquired a life that doesn't have a direct connection with Metcalfe's invention. So Ethernet's success outside of the local area network isn't all Metcalfe's doing.
As a predictor of the future too, his track record is mixed: he once reckoned that the Internet would be dead by 1996.
But then, no futurologist or analyst has ever been 100 percent correct and, on the energy front, it's more likely that Metcalfe is pretty much on the button. Whether Zigbee becomes a core technology in the struggle to sustain human activity and energy consumption on an overcrowded planet remains to be seen.
But his views on the future importance of video (plug, plug) must surely be spot-on though...
24 July 2008
16 July 2008
Why I'm a sceptic on enterprise mobility
Are you an enterprise mobile sceptic? When I start listening to the evangelists for ‘mobile everywhere’ strategies, I am. I’ve heard quite a few recently, and they make mobility sound like a solution looking for a problem.
That might sound more than a little Luddite, but hear me out. You see, there’s mobility and there’s mobility, so let’s highlight the kinds of mobility that I’m not talking about.
When a business spends money on a technology, it wants to be clear what the return on that investment is, or is at least likely to be.
For example, if I make widgets I need to deliver them. This means I need to pay someone to take those boxes to paying customers. Without that vital process, I have no business, so I need to equip the delivery drivers with the kinds of technology that both adds to their productivity and makes their lives easier. This is not the kind of mobility that triggers my scepticism.
Similarly, the sales execs need to be out and about talking to people. They need phones and other communications devices to do their jobs. That’s a given, they’re essential. Again, this isn’t the kind of mobility which makes my teeth stand on end.
The problem I have is with many IT industry companies, often large services and/or telecoms companies. Often they’ll own a network and so need to flog hardware, software and services that will add traffic to that network, helping to amortise the investment. To their hammer-wielding marketing people, everything looks like a nail.
I hear them say that there’s huge growth potential in mobility (a statement which experience teaches us usually means there’s not much out there already). Maybe so -- although it sounds like the same story I was hearing from a very large networking company 15 years ago -- and again 10 years ago, and so on.
Despite the accessibility of mobile technologies and undoubted benefits they bring to a large number of people, mobility isn’t something that everyone in a company needs. And most companies presumably agree, since most haven’t bought into mobile technologies in a major way. If they had, the vendors wouldn’t be talking about the amount of potential that exists.
That’s because most people’s jobs aren’t mobile and they’re unlikely to benefit much if at all from being asked to do their jobs wirelessly. Most people sit in front of a monitor most of the time, processing data, making decisions. They interact with the people in the office because they’re physically close to them for that explicit purpose. Mobility is of marginal benefit.
Don’t get me wrong: for me being connected while mobile is a great productivity gain when I’m working with my laptop on the train, in a hotel lobby or coffee shop. But I won’t make the mistake of imagining that the way I work is typical of most.
For the CIO, perhaps a bigger brake on the development of a mobility-for-all strategy is that a loosening of control over devices with an ability -- propensity, even -- to return from the big bad world onto the company network laden with viruses and other malware is not an attractive prospect. Not to mention the cost of managing them all.
This draws me to conclude that CIOs are more likely to lean towards the idea of developing a strategy which results in expenditure on mobile software and hardware only in cases where the job demands it.
Which is where we came in -- and why I remain a sceptic when vendors bearing mobile strategies come a-knockin’. Until, that is, I hear otherwise.
That might sound more than a little Luddite, but hear me out. You see, there’s mobility and there’s mobility, so let’s highlight the kinds of mobility that I’m not talking about.
When a business spends money on a technology, it wants to be clear what the return on that investment is, or is at least likely to be.
For example, if I make widgets I need to deliver them. This means I need to pay someone to take those boxes to paying customers. Without that vital process, I have no business, so I need to equip the delivery drivers with the kinds of technology that both adds to their productivity and makes their lives easier. This is not the kind of mobility that triggers my scepticism.
Similarly, the sales execs need to be out and about talking to people. They need phones and other communications devices to do their jobs. That’s a given, they’re essential. Again, this isn’t the kind of mobility which makes my teeth stand on end.
The problem I have is with many IT industry companies, often large services and/or telecoms companies. Often they’ll own a network and so need to flog hardware, software and services that will add traffic to that network, helping to amortise the investment. To their hammer-wielding marketing people, everything looks like a nail.
I hear them say that there’s huge growth potential in mobility (a statement which experience teaches us usually means there’s not much out there already). Maybe so -- although it sounds like the same story I was hearing from a very large networking company 15 years ago -- and again 10 years ago, and so on.
Despite the accessibility of mobile technologies and undoubted benefits they bring to a large number of people, mobility isn’t something that everyone in a company needs. And most companies presumably agree, since most haven’t bought into mobile technologies in a major way. If they had, the vendors wouldn’t be talking about the amount of potential that exists.
That’s because most people’s jobs aren’t mobile and they’re unlikely to benefit much if at all from being asked to do their jobs wirelessly. Most people sit in front of a monitor most of the time, processing data, making decisions. They interact with the people in the office because they’re physically close to them for that explicit purpose. Mobility is of marginal benefit.
Don’t get me wrong: for me being connected while mobile is a great productivity gain when I’m working with my laptop on the train, in a hotel lobby or coffee shop. But I won’t make the mistake of imagining that the way I work is typical of most.
For the CIO, perhaps a bigger brake on the development of a mobility-for-all strategy is that a loosening of control over devices with an ability -- propensity, even -- to return from the big bad world onto the company network laden with viruses and other malware is not an attractive prospect. Not to mention the cost of managing them all.
This draws me to conclude that CIOs are more likely to lean towards the idea of developing a strategy which results in expenditure on mobile software and hardware only in cases where the job demands it.
Which is where we came in -- and why I remain a sceptic when vendors bearing mobile strategies come a-knockin’. Until, that is, I hear otherwise.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
