TelecomsTech caught up with Pat Nash, managing director at InVMA, a partner of M2M and IoT solutions provider ThingWorx to discuss standardisation, Google Glass and how startups can get by in an increasingly competitive market

There are a few burning issues with machine to machine (M2M) communications before the mainstream boom hits; namely standardisation and partnerships.

Yet Pat Nash, managing director at InVMA, sees things differently.

“I don’t think standardisation will necessarily help the industry, but I think for startups in particular partnership is the way forward,” he told TelecomsTech. “To me it’s all about the ideas, not necessarily the technology or the implementation.”

Nash’s opinion is naturally reflected by his business outlook. His company, InMVA, partners with ThingWorx, one of the main IoT platform providers, which leaves him in what he calls a “fairly comfortable position.”

“If people want to standardise on the protocol that’s fine, it kind of makes it easy for everyone but if not, we’re cool with that,” he explains. “You can still get the connections, and we can still get the data in whatever the protocol.”

The view that partnership should be the strategy for startups may be a prescient one – and Nash is equally keen to stress the importance of the unforgettable idea.

“You’ve got to start with a vertical idea, particularly a solution, and run with that – get some traction, get some case studies available and go from there,” he notes.

“Ultimately the real winners in M2M and IoT are going to be based around some idea, some IP.”

Nash agrees that there needs to be a breakout hit to get the industry truly rolling in the mainstream.

“The industry isn’t really going to get going unless it’s monetised properly,” he notes, adding that with the quoting en masse of research numbers “it all loops into something more meaningful when you put that data in context.

“Say in an auditorium or a football stadium, you might want to know the capacity, or you might want to plan on when people start to leave so you can open exit doors,” Nash says. “Stuff like that, it’s linking through to the idea of how that might be useful, rather than just connecting stuff to the Internet for no apparent reason.”

With such a strong view on the breakout success, will Google Glass take that mantle? Nash is sceptical, although noting it’s more of a ‘killer idea’ the industry is scrambling for.

“I’m not certain,” he notes. “I think that the industry does need some killer apps without doubt, and those apps can take you anywhere across any vertical market at any time. At the moment money is probably being spent on M2M more than IoT, because it’s easy to identify some business value to return on investment.

“The first person who finds a killer app is going to do extremely well,” he adds.