VDC Research: Embedded Microprocessor, Board & Systems Market Blog

M2M can Authenticate Actionable Intelligence for Hospitality Industry

During a recent conversation at VDC, the topic turned to a problem often seen by users of travel and restaurant advisor sites. It is often difficult to determine legitimate user ratings from those that were created by employees or competitors of the venue in question. We believe that Google, Apple, or another industry participant could mitigate this problem by using an M2M architecture solution. Here is how it would work:

 

The persons who would want to be authenticated reviewers of hospitality venues would register at a cloud-based site. The mobile devices they carry would be linked to their profile. The reviewers would have to opt-in to allow GPS and Wi-Fi location based tracking and logging.

If the reviewer wishes to submit a rating for a venue they log into the cloud-based application. The cloud based application verifies that the location data from the reviewer’s mobile device matches the pattern of a legitimate customer. If the verification passes, the rating and commentary are accepted. The identity of the reviewer could be obscured if needed but, if their reviews were found to be questionable, they could be disqualified in the future.  It’s not foolproof, but it’s better than what many of these rating sites have today.

ALPR = Big $$ for Embedded Hardware Suppliers

An interesting opportunity for embedded hardware suppliers caught the attention of the VDC M2M Embedded Platform team. The opportunity was highlighted in a Boston Globe article this week about a local police department that equipped a cruiser with a $28K Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) unit. There were a number of eye-popping statistics starting with the fact that the unit apparently paid for itself in the first 11 days it was deployed. The ROI was accomplished from revenues generated by identifying vehicles and drivers with expired licenses, registrations, inspections, or other unpaid fines and fees. ALPRs can also be used for parking enforcement particularly in areas where civilian officials want to encourage shoppers with low cost short interval parking spaces. In this parking application, an official uses an ALPR to detect commuters and/or store workers that try to take advantage of the potential arbitrage and fine them.

Now let’s look at the $28K bundle of embedded hardware and software and speculate a bit on what is likely to be involved. The ALPR cited by the Boston Globe had the capability to read 1,800 license plates per minute and cover 4 lanes of traffic simultaneously. It can make those readings at differential speeds of up to 150 mph. This is a key factor because the unit is mounted on a cruiser as opposed to a parking or toll-taking lane where only the vehicle would be moving and the zone where the license plate would be is more predictable. Therefore there has to be a camera system capable of capturing a wide field at varying focal lengths and light conditions. The torrent of data from the camera system has to be rapidly processed to identify license plates and simultaneously perform Optical Character Recognition (OCR) on 4 or more plates in the field of view. Additionally, the system has to identify the state that issued the plate. This is challenging because many states like Massachusetts issue multiple types of specialty plates for sports teams and other organizations or causes. States also control costs by not replacing license plates until they practically fall apart. Therefore, it is fairly safe to say that there would be approximately $10K in optics and high performance processing inside the ALPR to accomplish the OCR function.

What happens next is important. We are going to make an assumption and it is a big one. We will assume that the ALPR generates data that supports law enforcement but this data will not be a cornerstone for court cases. This means that the raw video would not need to be compressed and stored for future reference while preserving chain of custody. For example, if the ALPR were going to be used for moving traffic or criminal violations it would need to have irrefutable video evidence that identified the driver as well as speed measurement data. Because of our limited OCR assumption, the captured data only needs to be combined with time stamps, GPS coordinates and, perhaps a few operational parameters. As a result, this limited data set would be in the order of kbytes per record as opposed to Mbytes per second for full video archiving. Even so, this still represents several thousands of dollars per ALPR unit for the additional embedded sensing, processing, storage, HMI and communication hardware.

In our estimate, the next part of the ALPR application would optimally involve cloud-based Big Data resources. The ALPR would transmit captured data in real time and processed for matches in multiple databases. The response back to the police cruiser would have to be rapid to be effective. The most effective ALPR supporting infrastructure would have to combine data from all municipalities, states, and federal agencies relevant to a particular region. Suffice it to say, the cloud-based and communication services could easily amount to several hundred dollars per month for each ALPR deployed.

The Boston Globe article stated that there were already 87 ALPRs deployed in the state with another 7 Boston area police departments adding 21 additional in the next month. Considering that Massachusetts alone has over 350 cities and towns but the entire US represents over 36,000 municipalities, the potential market for ALPRs and the embedded hardware inside them would appear to be a huge and rapidly growing opportunity.

VDC Initiating Coverage on SMARC Embedded COMs

Supplier interviews for VDC’s 2013 Embedded Hardware Service for Embedded Products are currently underway. As a result of a recent SGET (Standardization Group for Embedded Technologies) announcement, we will now be including SMARC as a separate form factor in VDC’s embedded COMs report. SMARC, formerly known as ULP-COM, comprises a Kontron-proposed SGET standard for ultra low power COMs. In 2013, Kontron has announced the release of 3 new SMARC products utilizing one of Freescale, TI, or NVidia ARM-based processors. Somewhat similar in appearance to the DIMM-PC COM form factor which originated with JUMPtec (acquired by Kontron in 2002), SMARC modules are edge-connected rather than pin-connected as are many other COM form factors.

We expect low power computing modules such as SMARC which take advantage of new low power SoC products will find traction in many embedded markets, particularly in M2M applications. OEMs should be very interested in products that can be added to their existing platforms to add M2M functionality. In cases where an OEM’s products were not future-proofed with respect to available space or power supply capacity, being able to add new computing modules that support M2M without costly retrofits can be a huge advantage. In cases where M2M is being designed into a new system, these ultra low power computing modules can add the necessary functionality without having a huge impact on Bill of Material (BoM) costs.

We believe that VDC’s coverage of SMARC and similar embedded devices is of critical importance, both to suppliers of those products as well as to their customers. To put it simply, nobody wants to “bet on the wrong horse.” For an embedded product standard to be successful, it would have to be supported by several suppliers and purchased by a solid and wide customer base. Given any uncertainty, customers and suppliers are more likely to commit their money to proven products and standards, no matter how compelling the new developments might seem from a technology standpoint.

In 2013, VDC will work with both suppliers and their customers to determine which new products and standards are gaining traction and which, if any, product types or standards are losing share. It should be a very interesting year.

Sandy Hook & Aurora Theatre - Can Embedded Technology be a Part of the Solution?

In yesterday’s blog we looked at some pretty creepy applications for situational awareness technology. Now, let’s look to how these systems can be employed in a much more socially acceptable manner. In the wake of the Sandy Hook School and Aurora Theatre tragedies, President Obama has made a governmental call to action with a task force being formed to examine every possible solution. Gun control will be considered as well as the NRA’s plan to use more armed guards.  Neither extreme is likely to be a good standalone solution.

Embedded computing could be part of a more optimal solution. Situational awareness technology similar to the signage and Verizon patent could be used as part of surveillance and security systems. In large urban areas, systems that detect and precisely locate gunshots are already being successfully deployed.  When these Gunshot Location (GSL) systems are coupled with remote controlled high definition cameras it is makes it much more likely that a perpetrator can be swiftly apprehended.

In an indoor setting like a school and movie theatre a GSL system would be presented with challenges that they would not have outdoors. The acoustics of walls and hallways will require sophisticated Digital Signal Processing (DSP) capabilities to account for the echoes and make a precise location. If we take the movie theatre into account, there would have to be some feedback of the movie soundtrack back into the GSL system to ignore the gunshots in the movie.

So, would this situational awareness and GSL technology be the complete solution? Unfortunately the answer would be no. What it would be is a mitigating factor allowing in some cases a much more timely response from security and/or law enforcement. The emergency responders would immediately know the identity and location of the threat. It is also possible that a situation could be prevented if the situational awareness presented an actionable alert to security before the shooting starts. Angry shouts, rapid changes in the area population’s mood / emotions could be possible triggers. Camera systems that identify possible guns being carried could also play a part but they would need humans as a backup. Even so, these surveillance systems would have the constant attention that no human could consistently apply over long time periods.

Regardless of the exact details of President Obama’s task force findings and the resulting US government legislation and response that follow, there are a few elements that are certain. Money will be appropriated and visual and acoustic data from widespread camera and microphone installations will need to be tightly integrated to provide the actionable data. Therefore, there will be clear opportunities in 2013 and beyond for embedded component, system and software suppliers. Those suppliers that already are participating in Digital Signage or Digital Security and Surveillance markets will have an advantage but new or innovative technology can easily disrupt the incumbents so complacency is not an option.

A Big Week for Telecom in M2M - 2 Key Announcements

This week there were several interesting developments related to M2M and cloud services. The first was the announcement of an agreement between IBM and AT&T that effectively provides a comprehensive connectivity and cloud services package. Why is this deal significant? The primary answer is security. If there is one main barrier to M2M adoption, it is the concept of moving sensitive data through the internet. The other related barrier is about exposing a machine or thing to outside access through that same path.  One example of security loopholes would be a “man in the middle” access and this is highlighted in the recent US House Intelligence Committee report looking at the entry of Huawei and ZTE into the US market. That report examined the risk that data passing through the Huawei or ZTE equipment could be remotely disrupted by and/or hi-jacked to a 3^rd party which, in this case, would be the Chinese military.

 In a recent VDC survey on the embedded cloud that examined the use of edge computing to support M2M connectivity, we found that security was cited as challenge to implementation by 25 – 30% of respondents. This was significant when we considered that, in addition to the typical edge processing roles of communication, data aggregation and pre-processing, 49% of IT and End-Users surveyed would include firewall/Virtual Private Networking functions in those units. In other words, you can never have too much security.

M2M connectivity often involves cloud based resources and after the connection from the machine to the edge of the network is solved, you then have to make the connection to the cloud. The IBM & AT&T collaboration will give potential customers a secure private connection to the IBM cloud services. The customers will get an integrated solution without having to deal with two completely separate organizations to complete the implementation. This is of huge value to the M2M market because many of the machines/things being connected are mobile and this places extra layers of wireless connectivity in order to complete the M2M solution.

Speaking of mobile equipment connectivity, this brings us to a second notable announcement from this week. On Tuesday, we saw that Digi International had announced collaboration with Deutsche Telecom to enhance their M2M solution portfolio. As part of this agreement, Digi will be the first to integrate DT industrial grade SIM cards into their connectivity products. This removes many layers of complexity in a mobile M2M project as the complete solutions can likely be installed directly out of the box and automatically connect to the Digi cloud services using the DT cellular network.

So, in summary, we see two very similar partnership announcements that are changing the M2M ecosystem in ways that will accelerate the pace of m2M connectivity. This is precisely one the theme of the VDC FastForward: Insights for Leaders report on Securing Your Place in the Evolving Internet of Things Ecosystem that is due to publish shortly. In 4Q of this year, the Embedded Hardware practice will also be covering the OEM perspective of M2M and the Internet of Things through our Voice of the Customer service.

Securing Your Place in the Evolving Internet of Things Ecosystem

With the start of the 4^th quarter of 2012 VDC’s Embedded Hardware Practice is kicking off the project to produce the 3rd exciting volume in the FastForward: Insight for Leaders series. We look forward to your participation as we look to profile several dynamic companies that are active in the ecosystem that is driving the Internet of Things (IoT) revolution.

Does your company have an interesting success story that involves some of these elements?

• Solving problems through M2M connectivity
• Monetizing data that had been stove-piped in embedded systems
• Partnerships between your organization and others to provide advanced product packages that involve M2M/IoT
• Cloud based resources
• Green initiatives to save and/or generate energy
• Interesting solutions that involve mobile devices
• IoT connectivity solutions in Mil/Aero, Medical, Retail, Transportation, and/or Infrastructure related markets

If so, one element of this report will be detailed case studies of interesting IoT solutions as they demonstrate the evolving ecosystem of market participants and the technology and business strategies that are being employed.  This VDC report will be a key platform to showcase your company and your IoT success stories to VDC’s  typical audience of suppliers, investors, and potential customers. Please share your story with us and, if possible, we will include it in the report.

If you are interested in participating by contributing and/or purchasing, the full proposal is included here:

 

The Internet of Things is fundamentally redrawing the lines that have defined the embedded computing industry for years. Once the domain of specialized, niche-focused technology suppliers, embedded computing is now attracting enormous attention from virtually every major enterprise IT player (as well as a wide range of start-ups), all of whom increasingly recognize the huge business opportunity resulting from the emerging Internet of Things. At the same time that these major new entrants are appearing in the once staid embedded marketplace, established embedded technology vendors are finding themselves increasingly uncertain regarding how to defend their hard-won turf in specialized verticals and applications, as well as how to stake a claim to a part of Internet of Things explosion. For this report we will develop an industry roadmap that projects the future of the IoT vendor ecosystem, with our view on the changing roles of established embedded industry participants, and the role new entrants are likely to play. In addition, the report will identify core capabilities that established players will need to develop in order to be successful and to secure a prominent position in an industry that could look radically different than it does today.

VDC to Explore Storage Trends within Embedded Integrated Computing Systems

For the last decade, storage has been a commoditized component of Embedded Integrated Computing Systems (EICSs) with the most cost effective solutions utilizing hard drives. Hard drives have maintained market dominance with respect to cost per MB stored as form factors have gone down and data rates and capacities have increased through higher rotation rates and platter densities.  The largest weakness for this mature technology is the higher likelihood of problems because of the spinning media and sensitivity to vibration, impacts, and environmental conditions. This has left the EICS market for hard drive based storage susceptible to disruptive technology and VDC believes this transition is under way.  In fact, we see many of the embedded system suppliers rapidly adding products and services to facilitate the transition. As we begin to set the agenda for the 2013 embedded hardware service, we believe that storage will be a key area to focus on with three alternatives to hard disk storage technology leading the charge.

Solid State Drives: Solid State Drives (SSDs) are designed to be deployed as drop in replacements for legacy hard drives removing the second barrier to entry after price per MB.  SSDs do not have moving mechanical parts and are therefore much more reliable which makes them increasingly sought by the OEMs and customers of EICSs. As the prices for these SSDs units have come down and the capacities and performance has, at the same time risen, they are now suitable for many price sensitive OEM vertical markets and applications. They also use much less power and generate less heat which increases operational savings. There is one potential drawback in that the lifetimes and performance of SSDs are not unlimited. Storage cells can only be written to a finite amount of times before they become unreliable. The controllers inside the SSDs account for this by ensuring that wear is distributed evenly across the storage cells but, how well/fast they do this may vary significantly by product. As a typical SSD reaches the end of its useful life, it will become appreciably slower as the controller has more difficulty allocating the write function to available/reliable cells.

Deeply Embedded Storage:  By eliminating the traditional hard drive form factors and data bus structures, the semiconductor storage components can be utilized more efficiently by being embedded in very close proximity to the processing components. These can be plug-in modules that go into backplane or mother board slots or components mounted directly on the computer board. These solutions can be used in embedded applications that require high processing capability but, at the same time are constrained by weight and power limits.

Remote / Network Attached Storage: Embedded and/or cloud storage products in many cases provides OEMs and their customers with an alternative storage method suitable for many EICS markets and applications.  In these cases, groups or individual pieces of equipment containing EICSs have local storage needed for immediate operation but the bulk of the needed storage is provided from a private cloud using network attached storage or contracted from a cloud service provider on a pay as you go basis. In either case, this remote storage technology can have valuable product features to avoid data loss and/or unnecessary duplication while assuring availability.

If you are a storage, SSD, and/or EICS supplier, we look to your opinion on storage within the embedded system market. 2013 looks to be an exciting year for embedded systems.

Connect with VDC Research Group at the Design East/Embedded Systems Conference 2012!

VDC Research Group will be joining the Design East/Embedded Systems Conference 2012 exhibition and conference.  During the conference, we will be presenting the coveted VDC Embeddy awards to a deserving product in the software and hardware categories. To make sure your product is considered, please make sure that:

• The product is formally announced at the show or, has been announced as of August, 2012
• That the VDC Research team will be briefed on the details of the product by your show staff.

Note: The Embeddys will be presented before Wednesday's keynote address. Therefore the briefings need to be completed by the evening of Tuesday September 18th.

VDC’s Embedded Hardware Team will be available at the show starting Monday September 17th and will be at the conference through the 19th.  During that time, we welcome the opportunity to connect with attending vendors.  We look forward to explaining VDC’s research methodology, learning about your latest product releases, and discussing your market research and strategic needs.

If you would like to learn more about the show, please click here.

If you would like to schedule a meeting around Embedded Hardware, please contact:

David Laing, Senior Analyst, Embedded Hardware & Systems Practice, VDC Research Group at: [email protected] or 508.653.9000 x146.

Or

Chris Rommel, Vice President, Embedded Hardware & Systems Practice, VDC Research Group at: [email protected]  or 508.653.9000 x123.

If you would like to schedule a meeting around Embedded Software, please contact:

Jared Weiner, Analyst, Embedded Software & Tools Practice, VDC Research Group at: [email protected]  or 508.653.9000 x143.

Unlike the IT Service Market, the Embedded System/OEM Service Market is Growing

As we kick off the VDC Research project focused on engineering and support services provided by embedded computer system suppliers I could not ignore the recent news about HP’s charge of close to $8 billion related to its services business. This was big news in that the services business for HP had represented approximately 28% of total revenues. Despite this setback for HP, the outlook for services for embedded computer suppliers is still positive. In this blog, I will explore how the embedded services business will benefit from many market drivers including the cloud.

Business / IT Services:  The main decrease in services business that HP is reporting is for IT related services. The IDS business that HP acquired in 2008 specialized in providing complete data center operations services for enterprise type customers and large government sector agencies. As many companies are now taking the next step and are migrating to the cloud, there is a subsequent decline in direct IT services for companies like HP. Although IT/Business is central to HP’s services offerings, the OEM/embedded market is also important to HP, Dell and IBM among other IT suppliers. 

Embedded Computer / OEM Services:  With respect to services, there are some very important differences in the embedded/OEM market as compared to the business/IT market. The following diagram shows the service markets that VDC is covering and where they fit in the OEM / embedded system lifecycle:

An embedded integrated computer system supplier usually has the inside track when an OEM or end customer is looking for embedded system solutions. With an economy that remains stagnant and some markets such as Mil/Aero looking at cutbacks, VDC believes that leveraging a supplier’s engineering expertise can often be the best strategy for reducing product development costs and timeline. The cloud also provides many opportunities as customers look to the advantages of Machine to Machine (M2M) connectivity for their products.  As the number of M2M connected products grows, the data that is generated by them can drive actionable intelligence when aggregated and processed in the cloud. The most recent VDC estimate for embedded services indicated a CAGR of over 7%.

In 2012, as we begin the latest research VDC believes that it is certainly possible for the projected growth to be in double digits in the immediate future. The caveat being that embedded system suppliers will need to streamline their service product offering to be in line with customer needs. If not, there are other market participants ready to expand their presence.

Competitive Landscape for Embedded Computer / OEM Services: The embedded computer suppliers do not have exclusive presence in the services market. As mentioned previously, the major IT suppliers such as Dell, HP, and IBM sell into the OEM market and provide many services to integrate and/or customize their products. Suppliers such as VMware and Wind River will also be competing for services business that leverages their software expertise. On other fronts VDC sees that systems integrators, value added resellers and consultants will also be competing. The strengths of these competitors will be their ability to offer the customers a complete solution that leverages best in class software and hardware from multiple companies.  

Looking for Your Opinion and Guidance: For this 2012 report, VDC is looking to profile as many companies (large and small) as possible. We intend to describe the strategies and product offerings that differentiate the profiled companies from their competition. If you believe that your company participates in the services market for OEMs / embedded systems, please contact [email protected] for an informative 2-way briefing. Research and outreach have already started and publication will be at the end of September, so there is still time to be included.

Metro cells versus Micro cells: Which is Winning?

Based on research for VDC’s soon to publish Track 2, Volume 2: DSPs, GPUs, and Media Processors report, VDC observed that metro cells are currently beating out microcells. In the course of this blog, I aim to analyze this trend and the market dynamics that are underlying it. 

It should come as no surprise that small cells like metro cells and femto cells are a big deal these days. With the huge explosion in data and video traffic that companies like Cisco are predicting, the macro cells are simply not viable, given the cost of installation, and the necessary accompanying investments in radio and backhaul infrastructure.  Added to that is the potential interference issues between the macro cells and the problems of permitting and finding enough space just to put them. Offloading mobile devices to small cells lets the traffic they generate bypass the radio and backhaul network, reducing the pressure there as well.

The question of why metro cells are exceeding other small cells in growth, at least in the case of certain companies is very interesting. One potentially key piece in the answer to that question is that in most cases, the Managed Service Providers (MSPs) own and control the metro cells, while other small cells are in enterprise or individual homes. This provides more incentive for the MSP to use metro cells, since they have ownership and management over the devices. Another cell type with fast growth is femto cells. Unlike metro cells, femto cells have limitations in terms of number of channels, restricted access, and can only be deployed indoors. Metro cells can support a greater number of users and can be deployed in both indoor and outdoor environments. VDC believes that the advantages and flexibility of metro cells are contributing to their growth.

Whether metro cells or femto cells emerge as the leading cell type is likely at the discretion of MSPs and enterprise. Whoever can align the most budgetary muscle and leverage the greatest influence on standards regulatory bodies will likely be setting the trend for which technology rises to dominance.