Times have changed for companies, like Inilex, in the M2M space. Founded in 2003, the company’s original purpose was to provide GPS tracking solutions to new car dealers as an after-market product sold at the dealerships.
While car dealers are dwindling in numbers, Inilex still is involved in that business, but now it’s offering a new solution to help M2M developers get their applications into the world – faster and at less cost. The announcement was made as M2M Connected World 2009 takes place in Chicago this week.
A few years ago, Inilex acquired a company that built two-way radio telemetry modules that worked on lower-cost paging networks. Inilex started working with customers that wanted to use the modules in various applications, such as irrigation control. But it became clear that the companies were struggling not in the hardware but in software development.
Inilex’s new Software as a Service (SaaS), Apprize, was born out of frustration, in part, from “having these companies with good ideas never get them launched because software was such a struggle,” explains Inilex founder and CEO Scott Ferguson.
Inilex already has figured out the complexities related to connectivity to wireless networks, so it’s offering Apprize so M2M app developers don’t have to repeat the same steps. Ferguson says the solution is technology and protocol agnostic and designed to save developers 50 percent on development costs and time.
M2M has been around for years, but Ferguson says interest has started to explode in the past six to 12 months. Historically, U.S. carriers didn’t get too excited about M2M because it doesn’t generate a lot of ARPU for them. However, that’s starting to change. “I think they are half-heartedly excited about it now,” he says.
Inilex currently works with companies in areas such as healthcare, energy management, vehicle tracking, irrigation controls, oil and gas and transportation.