As businesses adopt monitoring strategies for their mobile assets, and in the process generate massive amounts of data, they’re turning to machine-to-machine (M2M) solution providers to help them capture, control and extract this information for improved performance. And mining the right data in an in-creasingly mobile business landscape provides companies with an opportunity to gain a competitive advantage.
Consider the vast array of mobile devices, equipment and assets today’s businesses rely on for daily operations. M2M solutions allow organizations to collect and mine valuable data from their mobile assets in the field, then deliver this data as actionable business intelligence to desktops, laptops, tablets, and smart phones in corporate offices. That’s the machine-to-machine connection, and it’s a powerful one.
There’s no question that M2M technology has the potential to revolutionize the way businesses leverage their data. But before you rush to invest in an M2M solution, make sure you’re taking the time to ask your M2M provider the right questions. Beyond pushing your data from one machine (in the field) to another (in the office), your M2M solution must support your business success by providing the robust service, elastic scalability, secu-rity, and future-proofing you need to drive efficiencies, conserve costs, protect your profits and capture new opportunities. In the following pages, we’ve identified the six most important questions to ask your M2M solution provider before selecting your partner. We’ve also provided insight into how Spireon, one of the largest and fastest growing M2M companies, is meeting this critical checklist of best practices with their open extensible NSpire M2M Intelligence Platform.
Spir
eon.com
Do You Know Where Your Data Is?
Six Critical Questions You Should
Be Asking Your M2M Provider
WHITE PAPER
NSpire Wins Battle of
the M2M Platforms
On January 29, 2013, Spireon had the opportunity to present our NSpire M2M Intelligence Platform at the Battle of the Platforms, a competitive event held at the 2013 M2M Evolution Con-ference in Miami. The battle challenged M2M early adopters and innovators to make a compelling business case for their M2M solutions before a panel of industry peers and judges.
Participants and their platforms were judged across a range of criteria, with winners selected in multiple categories. NSpire ended the event with a win in Business Intelligence. Winning the Battle of the Platform confirms what increasing numbers of companies are discovering: NSpire is delivering on the promise of M2M technology to revo-lutionize the way businesses connect to and manage their mobile assets for improved business performance.
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Question 1:
How Do You Ensure
Service Availability?
Beware of M2M solution providers whose idea of infrastructure is a server in the closet. To see a measurable return on your M2M investment, you need an M2M solution supported by a robust platform engineered to promote the highest level of service availability.
Ask your M2M provider what measures they take to ensure you have access to the information you need, exactly when you need it. Is their solution built on a platform with built-in redundancy and fault tolerance for continuous uptime? Or is the solution at the mercy of a single facility or server platform?
Make sure you find out who manages the servers that are storing and transmitting your critical and sensitive data. Are those servers located in a professional data center manned by a cadre of IT professionals and security staff? Or are your servers under the care of a single IT guy? If you are dealing with a data center, find out where it’s located — on U.S. soil or offshore?
Be sure to find out how redundant the data center is. Do they offer offsite redundancy and fault tolerance or simply duplicate the systems onsite? Without adequate offsite systems in place, you’ll experience interruptions in your service that keep you from getting the real-time, critical business data you need to make smarter, faster, more profitable business decisions.
If a component — say a web server, an ISP connection or even an entire data center — within our network fails, another part of the NSpire cloud takes over without interruption of service.
Unlike private cloud environments that tend to utilize older technology,
and cost significantly more to maintain, NSpire’s public cloud offers greater
elasticity and utilization. This dedicated, highly secure environment ensures
higher availability and faster delivery of service.
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Spireon’s Approach:
NSpire Cloud
with Built-in Redundancy and Fault
Tolerance
Spireon has invested significant resources to build our NSpire M2M Intelligence Platform from the ground up. Its infrastruc-ture incorporates the latest databases, web servers, and hard-ware – all connected and secured by strategically located, top-tier data centers. This enables NSpire to deliver the highest level of service availability for the over 2 million subscribers we currently support, as well as millions more down the road. Cloud-based environments, also known as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), give businesses on-demand access to sophisticated, powerful business applications that are remotely hosted and maintained. This saves companies the cost and time of imple-menting, managing and learning how to use complex, costly hardware and software themselves.
Today, Spireon’s NSpire M2M Intelligence Platform supports:
• 1.7 million subscribers
• 0.25 million data events per hour • 2.2 billion data events per year
Spireon’s Approach:
NSpire Cloud
with Built-in Redundancy and Fault
Tolerance (Continued)
NSpire’s infrastructure also comes with multiple levels of redun-dancy and fault tolerance, eliminating any single point of failure. Within NSpire’s cloud-based infrastructure, all components of the software are clustered as well as hot-swappable. This allows for load balancing and prevents any one server from being over-loaded or information from getting bottlenecked. This ensures access to the real-time data you need, when you need it.
Question 2:
How Scalable is
Your Solution?
Your M2M solution should be able to easily accommodate an increase in demand from you, as well as from other users and customers without impacting delivery of service or data. If the system isn’t scalable — for example, built in a legacy environ-ment — when demand goes up, performance goes down. The system begins to behave sluggishly, and you’ll experience longer delays in getting the real-time information and reports you need to make nimble business decisions. What’s more, the data you do eventually receive runs the risk of being outdated and degraded, giving you false intelligence instead of business intelligence. The IT professionals at Spireon use an Enterprise- level monitoring system to provide real-time statistics for capacity management. Almost immediately through automated scripts, Spireon’s IT team can increase capacity to meet additional or unexpected demand.
Spireon’s Approach:
Elastically
Engineered
There was a time when adding more capacity required making a physical trip to the data center to bolt in, configure and connect more storage. With NSpire, we’re able to quickly and easily add capacity in the cloud to meet a sudden burst in usage, without incurring downtime.
Supremely elastic, NSpire grows easily with your company’s mobile assets and data demands. We’ve built NSpire’s infra-structure using the latest high-performance technologies at the application level, as opposed to easily bottle-necked legacy applications. This includes NoSQL databases with in-memory storage that allow us to scale horizontally as we add more com-puting or storage resources – without the need for re-architecting – while continuing to deliver and analyze our customers’ data at breakneck speed. Our innovative state engine stores every piece of data from every device along with embedded business intelligence, enabling our customers to act on their information more intelligently and nimbly.
Question 3:
What Security Controls
Do You Have in Place to Protect
My Data?
The last thing you want or need is for your sensitive business data to end up in the hands of your competitors or malicious entities. With increasingly stringent privacy rules and regulations being enforced across industries, you’re under increasing pressure to protect your employees’ and customers’ data as well. Find out what precautions your M2M provider takes to keep your informa-tion, and your bottom line, from being exposed to risk and liability.
NSpire’s NoSQL databases with in-memory storage allow us to scale horizontally as we add more computing or storage resources to meet an in-crease in demand – without the need for re-architecting.
Our network is comprised of multiple Tier 3 and Tier 4 data centers strate-gically located nationwide, each one adhering to stringent security controls and protocols.
Question 3:
What Security Controls
Do You Have in Place to Protect
My Data? (Continued)
Many other providers attempt to manage their customers’ data in-house, using their internal resources. The risk in this is the lack of in-house security expertise. Ideally, you want your data security and privacy managed by experienced security experts trained in the latest security threats and tools for combatting these threats. These experts should be dedicated to monitoring your data 24/7, year-round — not splitting their security duties with other IT tasks. You’ll also want to make sure your security experts regularly update their security procedures to counter the most recent attack strategies and trends.
Spireon’s Approach:
Your Data Is
Protected with Multi-Layered
Security
To ensure the highest level of system and data security, we built the NSpire platform using a multi-layered security approach. Our network is comprised of multiple Tier 3 and Tier 4 data centers strategically located nationwide, each one adhering to stringent security controls and protocols. These data centers, accessible only to those with high-level security clearance, employ a host of physical security features including mantraps and palm readers, onsite cameras, and robust protection against break-ins.
Beyond physical security, the data centers in NSpire’s network use leading-edge security to protect the data that travels be-tween them and our customers. Secure internet pipes link the data centers, encrypting any data that gets pushed through them. Our data centers also employ robust firewalls and sophis-ticated access protection to ensure our customers’ sensitive data doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. The Spireon IT team runs weekly security scans against all external facing systems to proactively catch any potential vulnerabilities.
Driving Results for the
Vehicle Finance Industry
The NSpire M2M Intelligence Platform powers Spireon’s suite of Automotive Solutions designed for organizations in the Vehicle Finance Industry, including automotive finance companies, banks, credit unions and dealerships with in-house financing. NSpire’s exceptional high service availability and elastic scalability allows lenders to track vehicle assets in real-time, on-demand. So in the event an account becomes delinquent, the lender can quickly, cost-effectively locate and recover the vehicle asset.
Added features such as the remote starter disabler and automated payment reminders also promote on-time payments and help borrowers rebuild their credit. Lenders cut losses related to delinquencies while turning credit-challenged borrowers into higher-value car buyers.
The results speak for themselves. Among lenders using Spireon’s NSpire-powered Automotive Solutions:
• 84% report reduced delinquencies • 78% have been able to finance customers with lower credit
• 68% have been able to finance customers with smaller down payments
• 77% show significant improvement of customer credit ratings
All of which translates into lower risk, fewer losses and reduced costs for our lender customers. In fact, Spireon’s solutions have helped our vehicle finance customers increase their return on capital by 87%.
Question 4:
How Will Your Solution
Help Me Adapt to Changes in the
Market and Technology?
Your business needs are going to change. So is the market you operate in. Your M2M solution should help you prepare for these changes so you can continue to grow, respond quickly to market dynamics, and take advantage of emerging opportunities as well as technologies. Many M2M systems are proprietary, closed, and built to serve a single niche industry or market. This inflexibility makes it difficult and costly to add new features, functionality and technology that respond to evolving needs. These less flexible systems also don’t play well with others, making integration with other third-party systems you’ve already invested in a costly and cumbersome undertaking.
Spireon’s Approach:
Open
Extensible Platform
Spireon has engineered our NSpire M2M Intelligence Platform to be future-proof. Built on scalable code, our platform allows us to add features and functionality as they’re needed with plug-n-play ease. Using APIs (application programming interfaces), NSpire also talks to other third-party systems you may already be using, as well as future iterations of these systems. This not only protects your current and future investments, but also maximizes those investments by integrating their features and functionality into a single interface that provides unprecedented visibility into your mobile assets.
And as technology evolves, you’ll be ready to embrace it — as well as emerging opportunities in your market. Spireon’s NSpire M2M Intelligence Platform equips you with a clear migration path to next-generation software applications and mobile devic-es so that you can easily take advantage of technology advancdevic-es that give you a competitive edge. And because NSpire’s software architecture separates the user interface logic from the domain logic, we’re able to quickly develop and launch solutions for our existing customers and new vertical markets on top of the exist-ing platform.
Spireon’s NSpire M2M Intelligence Platform equips you with a clear migration path to next-generation software and applications so that you can easily take advantage of technology advances that give you a competitive edge.
TMW Systems Integration:
Combining Best of Both
Systems
Spireon recently partnered with TMW Systems, a leading provider of enterprise software for transportation and logistics companies, to integrate data captured by its TMWSuite and TMT Fleet Maintenance systems with the NSpire platform.
As a result of the integration, TMWSuite users now have the ability to capture information via sensors installed on trailers, then leverage this data for enhanced dispatch operations. NSpire now enables TMT Fleet Maintenance users to automatically schedule preventative maintenance work based on actual miles driven, as well as automatically alert maintenance departments when a trailer requiring repairs or maintenance enters the yard. The integration has equipped transportation customers with an even richer level of data to drive productivity, efficiencies and substantial savings.
Question 5:
What Will You Do With
All My Historical Data?
Instant access to real-time information is key to actionable business intelligence. But so is access to historical data, which allows you to accurately measure performance improvements, as well as your M2M return on investment over time. Be sure to ask your M2M provider how they store the massive amounts of business data captured by your mobile devices and how they make that historical data readily available to you. For some industries or companies, you may also have policies that dictate what information you need to keep and for how long. In this case, you are going to want to know if you can customize the data retention to meet your needs and not get stuck with a “one size fits all” design.
Many M2M solutions have no adequate system in place for managing the volume or customized requests around historical data. As the information piles up, and storage capacity is con-sumed, these systems begin truncating the data or take it offline so it won’t bog down the bandwidth. As a result, you could end up with significant delays whenever you want to retrieve historical data, crunch it and generate reports. You often have to combine more than one report to get the answer you are looking for on a given asset. This is because the provider has to give you one report for the online data and another report for archived data. Even worse, valuable historical data could be lost altogether. Improper or inadequate storage of historical data could also leave it exposed to competitors and malicious or criminal ele-ments. In almost every case, providers typically have only one design and approach to how they handle the data, when it gets truncated and where it is stored. Meaning, your options are limited by their design.
NSpire in Action:
M2M Means ROI for
CCBCC
The world’s largest independent Coca-Cola distributor, Coca-Cola Bottling Consolidated Company (CCBCC) operates a large, geo-graphically disperse fleet of trailers respon-sible for the on-time delivery and pick-up of product at manufacturers’ locations across multiple states. To help optimize its fleet management, CCBCC implemented Spir-eon’s FleetLocate GPS Trailer Tracking and Intelligence Solution.
Powered by NSpire, FleetLocate connects CCBCC’s fleet managers and logistics execu-tives to the real-time business intelligence they need to make sure the right trailer is at the right location at the right time. This unprecedented visibility into their trailer fleet has also generated significant savings for the company, including:
• $15,000 - $20,000 recovered in missing assets
• $400 per unit/year reductions in preventative maintenance-related costs • $100,000/year in decreased leasing costs • 15% fleet reduction
• 100 man-hours per week saved by eliminating automated manual yard checks
CCBCC continues to rely on NSpire to keep the company connected to their mobile assets, workforce and critical information at all times, allowing them to do more — and generate more profits – with less.
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Spireon’s Approach:
Massive
Storage Capacity
As part of Spireon’s data retention policy, we’ve engineered NSpire to make your complete historical data readily available to you, whenever you need it, for as long as you want it.
While other M2M providers purge old data from their systems to keep them from impacting performance, we are able to con-tinue to store all data captured by your devices where it’s readily accessible. Our massive storage capacity enables us to retain this data without slowing down system performance or service availability. If you have a need to look back at your historical data for a true measure of performance (even over multiple years), NSpire can serve it up to you quickly. Conversely, if your corporate or industry policy is to only retain data over a specific period of time, Spireon can implement these guidelines within NSpire due to its configurable architecture. This can be important for many companies that provide services to third party assets, such as consumer telematics.
Question 6:
What Investment Have
You Made In Human Capital?
By all means, ask your M2M provider how much they invest in research and development to ensure the most current solutions built on best-in-breed technology. But don’t forget to ask the provider about the investment they’ve made in their human capital — the brains and talent behind the technology. Inquire about the depth and breadth of experience, not only of the provider’s executive team but of the engineers who build and refine the M2M platform, as well as the sales and customer ser-vice teams responsible for supporting your success. Your pro-vider’s people should be knowledgeable not just in the tech-nology and solutions they supply, but in your specific industry and business.
Your provider’s people should be knowl-edgeable not just in the technology and solutions they supply, but in your specific industry and business.
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Spireon’s Approach:
In-Depth,
Industry-Specific Expertise
One of Spireon’s key strengths is our human capital. Spireon has fostered a culture that attracts, retains and rewards top-tier talent, thought-leaders and innovators — from the leadership in the boardroom down to the sales force in the field and every-one in between.
Our in-house team of software and hardware engineers have built the NSpire M2M Business Intelligence Platform from the ground up. As a result, they know how the platform works, and how to keep customers connected to their information better than anyone. We also have the in-house engineering expertise to respond quickly to our customers needs, as well as rapidly changing market dynamics. New features, functionality and capacity can be added on the fly so that you can capture new opportunities as they emerge.
Unlike the majority of M2M solution providers who serve a niche market, Spireon’s NSpire M2M platform supports multiple vertical industries — from trucking, transportation and logistics to enterprise and local fleets to automotive financing to health-care. We also offer the in-house vertical-specific expertise to meet the unique and varied needs of the industries we serve. By building teams dedicated to vertical industries, comprised of individuals with expertise in that industry, we’re able to quickly and effectively respond to the goals and challenges of our vertical customers with M2M-powered solutions customized for them.
Making the Right M2M Choice
Making the strategic move to employ M2M technologies that capture and leverage critical business data is a smart decision. Now make sure it’s the right one. Before you select an M2M solution, take the time to compare and contrast providers. Ask the tough questions, and don’t be satisfied with vague answers. Request real-world case studies that demonstrate how their M2M solutions delivered results for real-world customers. In-vesting the time upfront to carefully evaluate vendors and their platforms could save you money, time and resources down the line — especially in the event you’re forced to switch to a platform that better meets your needs.
Spireon welcomes your tough questions, your scrutiny, and the opportunity to demonstrate how our award-winning NSpire M2M Intelligence Platform meets the complete checklist of best practices for M2M solutions. We’ve made the investment to build a private cloud environment from the ground-up that delivers the highest level of service availability, elastic scal-ability, security, interoperscal-ability, agility and capacity of any M2M platform — connecting you to real-time business intelligence, on-demand, for improved business performance. And we’re ready to prove it to you.
Your M2M vendor should be able to present you with documen-tation and diagrams that illustrate their system architecture, as well as their policies for security, support, access control, and disaster recovery. We’re ready to show you our documentation and provide a live demonstration today.
Contact Spireon today at 1-800-557-1449
or visit us at Spireon.com.
While other M2M providers purge historical data from their systems to keep them from impacting performance, we continue to store all data captured by your devices where it’s readily accessible.
Contact Spireon today at 1-800-557-1449 for a live demonstration or visit us at
