Solutions vs. Systems

Many years ago, while working on the GSMA’s “Beyond M2M” strategy, an M2M service provider described their service offering to manage office photocopier machines remotely. This included continuous status monitoring, diagnostics, and just-in-time replenishment of consumables. At a time when cellular hardware and network connectivity were costly, the provider chose cellular over Wi-Fi connectivity. This was for economic and user-experience reasons. The cellular approach avoided the costs of liaising with the customer’s IT staff to customize local area networking policies. It also reduced technical support costs that arose from dispatching support technicians when remote management was ineffective due to local IT and firewall configuration issues.