The Open Data Streamroller

As markets in tech are born and then mature, they inevitably go through a process of moving from vertically integrated silos to horizontally integrated platforms as economies of scale come into play. This has happened across the landscape of hardware and software time and time again, and it's well under way in the cloud as well.

In the area of connected machines/devices/sensors/"things" and the services that are created around them, we've gone through more than a decade of vertical integration in a market that's been called "Machine to Machine" or "M2M".  Generally, this is the world of closed systems that monitor business processes for the purposes of efficiency and support.  This is the old, stodgy, smells-a-little-funky past where data was locked up in a vault and you paid to access it in a very defined manner.

We are calling the future of this market the "Internet of Things", which is fundamentally different from M2M.  It is open, spans across industries, technologies, and user groups, and extends the value of data without boundaries.  It is social, self-organizing, and collaborative.  It is not about business as usual and it's not about B2B versus B2C.  It's about a freaking steamroller that's makes fleet management and energy monitoring look like punch cards!

Those that doubt the speed or certainty of an open Internet of Things need only look at the Internet of Content/People. Issues of data ownership are being hotly debated.  Sharing, interoperability, and collaboration have transformed every application. We've already been through this.

The driver here for innovation and adoption is a vast blue ocean for commerce.  For developers and service providers, a "layered", open Internet of Things brings with it the opportunity to innovate on top of existing data.  Just as developers currently don't need to build their own systems for storage and processing (Amazon), mapping (Google), location based services (SimpleGeo), or social graph (Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn), they also won't need to worry about the collection of real-time information about a person's body, environment, or home.  Users will bring that data with them and developers will instead be able to focus on the rich possibilities of how to leverage that data for an incredible experience.

For consumers with a marketplace full of mind-blowing services at their fingertips, the driver will be the freedom to utilize their data with whatever and however many applications they want to.  Data won't be tied to a single piece of hardware, a single application, or a single company.  They'll have a choice, and that choice can be exercised based on the merits of the products they want instead of vendor lock-in.

This is what we're building here at Pachube -- the engine of interoperability for the Internet of Things and the marketplace that will drive innovation and adoption.  Pachube is already the largest global community of users that have discovered the value and utility of having access to the real-time pulse of their environment.  Our mission is to further connect this community with innovative service providers (hardware and software) and then to give them the ability to share what they've discovered and accomplished.

We're excited to share more of this vision and how we will see it realized as we make some big announcements over the next few months.  In the mean time, if you are a software developer, a sensor/hardware company, or have data that you want to plug into this unstoppable machine, you should contact me right away.

Get ready! This ain't your daddy's Internet!