Finnish cell phone giant Nokia on Tuesday announced a deal
with Hewlett Packard to wirelessly connect remote machines
using integrated machine-to-machine (M2M) software.
The deal would allow corporate clients to wirelessly manage services like
utility meter reading, vending machine operation, elevator control, fleet
and traffic control and other business processes that deal with remote
assets.
“Companies that rely on remote machinery and facilities and extended
manufacturing chains for services are expected to be among the first
adopters of M2M connectivity software,” the companies announced.
The moves to connect remote workforces and equipment using wireless
technology is nothing new and companies like Palm ,
Handspring and Research in Motion
have all focused heavily on enterprise tools to tap into this market.
However, by teaming up with a market leader like Nokia, HP now gets a
legitimate partner to roll out the M2M service to businesses in the U.S.
Customized M2M software area already up and running in Europe and the two
companies hope to expand its availability in other regions in the coming
months.
A typical M2M solution would include tying together the Nokia M2M Platform,
HP’s OpenView product suite components on an HP-UX or HP ProLiant server
backbone. The Nokia M2M Platform would provide the infrastructure for
allowing data communications between devices and Internet-hosted
applications.
The Nokia M2M Gateway acts as a bridging element between the GSM network and
the company intranet and provides wireless connection and Internet protocol
(IP) translation between applications located in the company server and in
the remote devices.
It ties into the HP OpenView management environment, which us used to manage
the infrastructure and any alarms that come from the machines.
Analysts praised the opportunities the deal provides for big companies with
remote workforces. Lars Vestergaard, research manager from IDC, said HP and
Nokia provide a “very interesting combination in the M2M space,” noting that
collaboration between two big-name companies can produce positive results.
Separately, Nokia inked a deal with international sports marketing firm IMG
to develop an MMS
news, images and audio commentary to cell phones.
The wireless service would be available in the U.S., Europe and Asia and
would be marketed to Nokia’s operator customers, who would brand the
services independently.
The deal calls for multimedia messages to be sent between MMS-capable phones
via the Nokia Multimedia Terminal Gateway. Nokia’s software would provide
content storage, voice messaging over MMS, connectivity to e-mail, and rich
push/pull applications.
