Mar 20, 2016

Amazon or Netscape strategy?

Last week, I attended the Industrial Internet Consortium’s (IIC) member meeting in Reston, VA. This gave me an opportunity to talk to executives from several companies about their IoT market objectives. In the prior week, I interviewed a C-level executive from an IoT infrastructure services provider on the same topic.

What struck me in all these discussions was the competitive tension between short-term and strategic IoT planning. The C-level executive put it best when he described how many of his clients’ sales plans for the coming year are based on implementing bespoke solutions; it’s a quick way to get to market. Where this model breaks down is when companies are implementing their third or fourth IoT applications.

At this stage, they are hostage to significant amounts of system integration activity, amongst other issues. This is also the point at which vendor lock-in starts to bite. The equivalent story at the IIC was of companies re-positioning existing capabilities as being IoT-ready so that applications or IoT-enablers could be seen to be generating early returns.

If you share the view that the IoT today has many parallels with the Internet of roughly 20 years ago then it’s instructive to look back. In particular, I’d compare today’s IoT developments with the approaches taken by Amazon and Netscape. Netscape was an Internet wonder, offering businesses and consumers new ways to experience the novelty of the Internet. Amazon, in contrast, looked like a different kind of book seller.

Netscape continued to evolve its Internet browser, eventually succumbing to competition from Microsoft. Amazon evolved its business model, enlarging the scope of its on-line retail operations and leveraging its infrastructure towards multiple customer segments through a platform-enabler business model.

Arguably, Amazon’s Internet vision is of the type that companies like Bosch and GE are exhibiting as they apply IoT capabilities to improve their business operations (as distinct from IoT being an end in itself).

Towards the end of the IIC meeting, it was interesting to see participants asking fundamental questions about the long term drivers of the IoT. There is a growing realization about the importance of standards. A couple of companies mentioned the mobile industry (arguably, mobile networks are by far the most ubiquitous distribution platform on the planet) and what lessons might be learned about the way companies in the mobile eco-system manage network resources in multi-vendor environments.

 And, after many years of focusing on vertical IoT applications and then horizontal platform capabilities, it was reassuring to see evidence that companies are (finally) catching up with the importance of monetization. In ‘telco speak’, these depend on the business support services that help service providers and their channel partners to implement multi-part pricing and revenue sharing schemes. They are a necessary complement to established connected-device and application-enablement platforms.

So, as conference delegates return to the every-day order of business, it’s worth looking to your executive suite. Is an Andreesen or a Bezos setting your company’s IoT direction?

2 comments:

  1. 22 Jan 2021 update

    Amazon opens Alexa AI tech for the first time so car makers can build custom assistants

    Amazon will now allow third-party companies the unprecedented privilege of accessing the core artificial intelligence underpinning its Alexa digital assistant, a first for the company’s AI platform.

    While Amazon has allowed companies to build skills for Alexa and allows pretty much any consumer electronic device maker to integrate Alexa into a compatible product, the e-commerce giant has not licensed the underlying AI tech for use in other assistant-like products. Amazon is calling the new offering Alexa Custom Assistant, and it’s starting out with a focus on the auto market.

    Amazon is doing so to allow not just automobile manufacturers, but any company with a need for a digital voice assistant more control over the software experience. This will allow companies to create their own wake words and custom voices and capabilities Amazon says will “co-exist” with Alexa as it’s designed to work today. For the auto market, this provides Amazon the added benefit of having its software built directly into cars.

    https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/15/22231336/amazon-alexa-auto-ai-custom-digital-assistants-car-makers

    ReplyDelete
  2. 27 Sept. 2024 update

    I get to talk with procurement teams about AWS Marketplace daily. The best part of these conversations is their delight when they see the consolidated purchasing analytics. A close second best part, though, is when some form of this question inevitably arises, “So AWS is reselling software now?” I love this question because the answer cuts to the heart of how IT marketplaces offer a new way of approaching software procurement. The answer is: no, AWS is not a software reseller. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a marketplace provider. Software vendors, channel partners, and professional services providers are all sellers within AWS Marketplace. For example, when a customer buys CrowdStrike from SHI in AWS Marketplace, the invoice they receive says, “CrowdStrike sold by SHI.”

    https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicsector/whose-contract-is-it-anyway-how-aws-marketplace-works/

    ReplyDelete