Ericsson and Indonesia's XL in M2M deal
Ericsson and XL Indonesia have partnered in the first machine-to-machine (M2M) deal in Southeast Asia.
Ericsson will provide M2M connectivity delivered as a service, and XL expects this to give it great flexibility in developing innovative M2M products for enterprises.
Ericsson will utilise its Device Connection Platform (DCP) to deploy, manage, and monetise millions of M2M and consumer electronics devices. PT XL Axiata Tbk, or XL, currently offers six different types of M2M services, with more than 125,000 subscribers.
Ericsson’s DCP is delivered as a service and will provide XL with a high level of flexibility as it develops M2M products for enterprises. The solution furnishes XL and its customers with everything needed to deploy, manage, and monetise millions of M2M and consumer electronics devices.
The DCP platform will offer XL the opportunity to increase revenue and decrease operational costs, as well as shorten time to market. With an M2M platform, XL’s enterprise customers gain the ability to monitor devices anytime and anywhere, access information quickly and accurately, and integrate easily into existing systems. XL’s current M2M offerings include smart metering and point of sales solutions, fleet management, logistics and delivery, personal tracking and mobile surveillance.
In addition, Ericsson will utilise its local and global expertise to accelerate XL’s M2M go-to-market plans, while the ecosystem created by DCP will allow for mutually beneficial business growth for both XL and its related companies.
Dian Siswarini, XL’s director of technology, content and digital services, said the Ericsson DCP will enable XL “to provide flexibility in offering end-to-end M2M products and services to our enterprise customers”.
Sam Saba, president director of Ericsson Indonesia, said this strategic partnership was in line with Ericsson’s vision that there would be 50 billion connected devices around the world – mainly through M2M – by 2020.
Enterprises have to address multiple challenges to launch their connected devices, and they often need to acquire expensive expertise beyond their business focus. For example, they need to build or integrate business support systems with mobile operators’ networks in order to manage and support their day-to-day operations. Partnering with Ericsson effectively removes those barriers to entry, so that an M2M business can scale exponentially.
