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Connect for new business opportunities M2M BUSINESS ENABLEMENT PLATFORM
The world of connected objects
How do we monitor the carbon footprint of a Innovations in platform technology have made
vehicle? How can we track and trace cargo on it possible to reduce the complexities and costs
the move? How do we know when a vending involved with service enablement. This has been
machine needs to be refilled? How do we remotely achieved by providing solution frameworks and
monitor the consumption of energy? How do we tools that allow for plug and play environments.
remotely control street light usages? The answer Enterprises can now rollout M2M services easily
is: by making these objects intelligent, by adding with minimal IT overheads leading to faster
devices to them that provide valuable information time-to-market and thus gain competitive advantage
in real-time or allow controlling the assets. This will and scope for innovation.
allow billions of objects across the world to generate
This white paper is intended for an audience
valuable business information. Machine-to-Machine
that understands or works with technology.
(M2M) is the technology that makes it all possible.
The objective is to give a high level technical
M2M allows both wireless and wired systems to
overview of CGI’s M2M Business Enablement
communicate with each other without manual
Platform and its capabilities. Readers of the paper
intervention. The overall environment within which
will be able to understand the M2M ecosystem and
these objects are connected and business value is
where the platform fits in.
created is called ’The Internet of Things’ (IoT).
The evolution to this age of connected devices,
sensor-embedded objects and other smart objects,
has led to a swarm of new innovative offerings. With
advances in communication networks and cloud
services, there has been a marked trend where
enterprises want to exploit the communication
capabilities between the devices and harness
real-time information from these to create
differentiation in services and enhance profitability
against their competitors.
M2M BUSINESS ENABLEMENT PLATFORM
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Be smart everywhere. With CGI.
Enterprises need platforms that support The platform offers a seamless interface
a wide array of data-collection interfaces for business applications, irrespective
and aid in the automatic discovery of the networks or devices being used.
and dissemination of information. It allows the business application to
CGI’s M2M Business Enablement innovate around their core business value,
Platform addresses the needs of where their strength lies, while letting the
enterprises and M2M application owners. platform take care of the network or device
As a result, their organisational assets complexities and the common services.
become system aware without human Enterprises can stay neutral with respect
attention or intervention, detecting device to network and devices, thus bringing
characteristics/parameters automatically in the agility and flexibility they would
and providing contextual information. need to meet the dynamic needs of their
businesses.
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The ecosystem
The M2M/IoT ecosystem consists of four The M2M platform in the telco’s network
distinct entities, as described in the picture is complemented by our M2M Business
below. The objects in the field that need to Enablement Platform, which provides
be connected are termed assets. communication services (device and
The asset could be a vehicle, a patient, network abstraction), information services
a home, and so on. Each asset would (such as event processing, analytics, data
have sensors or actuators (for monitoring modeling) on the data aggregated from the
or controlling, respectively) and assets in the field and common reusable
communication elements that are termed services framework.
devices.
The processed device information and the
The assets use a network operator’s common services exposed by the M2M
infrastructure for communication Business Enablement Platform are used
with the Business Enablement layer. by the business applications in the service
The network operator is responsible for provider layer, for delivering business value
the communication provisioning, service to the end consumers.
assurance, usage billing, and so on. The
communication providers generally have M2M propositions (in the service-provider
dedicated M2M platforms to cater to the layer) are integrated with the M2M
unique M2M business requirements in the Business Enablement Platform in such
telecommunications space. a way that these applications can focus
on innovating around their core business
CGI has conceived, built and continues value while leaving the complexities of
to support two of the world’s three largest M2M technology with the platform.
and most complex M2M platforms.
Environment Right Coverage Pay per use Customer
information Channel quality Simple to use B2B
Asset control Cost efficient Scalable B2C
Asset Communication M2M Business Service provider
On board Operator Enablement Platform
intelligence Sales, Marketing
Data protocol Device Information services Customer care
Power supply provisionin Asset & device Product mgmt
Physical data IF Service assurance management Order mgmt
Usage billing Communication
NETWORK
User interface
services
Device Mobile, satellite,
Connectivity WLAN Security
OS
Processing NFC/RFID/Zigbee Mobile Access
Application
Storage Web Provider
Physical IF
SOA/REST
Device Identity module
Business
Communication CGI
Service
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Overview
The M2M Business Enablement Platform • generate application-specific business
aggregates data coming from potentially events and alerts
millions of devices. These could be using • store device and business data based
different communication networks and on application/client requirements
different protocols for communication. • provide a self service portal for the
The devices provide data to the platform. partner ecosystem to manage their
The platform can store this data, services with minimal dependencies.
pre-process it and/or distribute the
The platform enables development of
information to applications subscribed
innovative applications quickly, across
to it. The platform provides a workbench
many diverse device environments.
that allows easy on-boarding of new
device types. The platform provides an
APIs provide communication between the
open application programming interface
M2M Business Enablement Platform and
(API) to enable easy on-boarding of M2M
the M2M applications. Communication
applications, thus creating an ecosystem
is based on standards like XML1 and
of devices and applications, which can
RESTful2 web services, making the
be offered in a PaaS or a SaaS model
interface, technology agnostic. Easy to
to multiple clients. Also, the platform
use graphical interfaces allow the end
provides services such as business insight
user to manage clients, M2M business
and analytics for M2M applications and
applications, devices and environments
enterprise clients. The platform has been
(views on the device data exposed to the
architected to support new capabilities
applications/clients). The interfaces also
based on requirements (for example
allow users to monitor and view reports.
geofencing or maps) and offer them as a
The architecture aligns to the European
service to the M2M applications.
Telecommunications Standards Institute
CGI’s M2M Business Enablement Platform (ETSI) M2M Technical Specification.
provides key capabilities to:
The ETSI produces globally-applicable
• offer the means for M2M business
standards for Information and
applications to become device and
Communications Technologies (ICT),
network agnostic
including fixed, mobile, radio, converged,
• enable M2M business applications to
broadcast and internet technologies.
share, collaborate and make use of the
ETSI is officially recognised by the
information services provided by the
European Union as a European Standards
platform based on the device data
Organisation. It is a not-for-profit
• integrate M2M business applications via
organisation with more than 700 member
an industry standard interface
organisations drawn from 62 countries
• administer the system and derive
across five continents.
reporting through a readily available
friendly user interface
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The component overview
The CGI building blocks of the M2M Data Warehouse: Data from the Device
Business Enablement Platform are Connection layer or business events
illustrated below. from the Data Processing component
can be stored by the M2M Business
Enablement Platform for later retrieval.
M2M Business Applications
This is configurable. Reports can be
App 1 App 2 App 3
generated based on the stored information.
User Application Access Layer
Services Portal
Application Integration: This is the
Information & Communication Services communication and common services
Client
Application Integration
backbone of the platform. M2M
Administrator
Data Warehouse Data Processing business applications can subscribe to
Device Connection
information or services on the platform.
It is responsible for providing the right
Device
application with the right platform
Device 1 Device 2 Device 3
Administrator capabilities.
Services: The M2M Business Enablement
The building blocks are: Platform provides standard interface to the
external world. The interface uses RESTful
Device Connection: This component web services for integration. Applications
communicates with the devices in the field. can configure different elements (for
The Device Connection layer can be easily example, devices or environments
extended to support new device types or common platform capabilities like
by adding agents to this component that geofencing and others) in the M2M
implements the communication protocol Business Enablement Platform.
of the device. The agents can be added to
the Device Connection component via a Portal: The multi tenanted portal
workbench. framework allows users to configure
screens for specific needs. With
Data Processing: This component is componentised building blocks (portlet),
used to process the data from the Device screens can be configured to view
Connection layer. It allows configuration the data in the data warehouse and
of business rules. These rules can be manage the M2M Business Enablement
configured to translate data received from Platform based on client requirements.
the devices into business events that can The framework also allows creation
be recognised by the M2M Business and deployment of client specific
Applications for further business actions. portlets to meet specific requirements.
This component also provides the self
service functionality for the different users
of the system to manage their operations
independently and easily.
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Deployment model
To provide appropriate scalability at the This model offers a truly collaborative
lowest costs, the platform has been approach and it allows our clients a
architected to run in a public/private cloud ‘pay-as-you-grow’ commercial model.
environment or data centres. We offer It allows solutions to be created from
enterprise services across public, private pilot to industrialised global roll-out
as well as hybrid cloud environments. This on a predictable and controllable cost
helps meet requirements of data security, model, using a common cloud-based
regulatory requirements with reference to environment. Most importantly, the
data storage, offering enterprises control platform offers uniform infrastructure that
over their storage as well as connectivity is available globally, thus enabling device
through secure tunnels or restricted IP independent access to the cloud.
ranges. The services are provisioned
and managed using cloud APIs and are This model offers a single-point server
template-driven, allowing services to be setup, redundant server setups as well
rolled out quickly and easily. as auto-scaling facilities. The redundant
server setup allows enterprises to reap
Consumers, business benefits from failover and clustering.
customers, citizens
Auto-scaling application-server
Service 1 Service 2 Service 3 Cloud infrastructure in the cloud provides
Services
automatic fail-safe mechanisms and
ensures data is spread across multiple
Cloud Application Operation
data stores, guaranteeing higher availability.
Template Cloud Management Operation & Provisioning Policy It also allows computing capacity to adapt
to site traffic. Load balancing across all
Cloud APL Cloud APL Cloud APL
the options ensures optimal resource
Operation Operator
utilisation and helps maximise throughput
Operator
Cloud
(IaaS)
Cloud and response times, avoiding overloads at
(IaaS)
GRID
any point in time.
Private Cloud
Private
Public Cloud
CGI GRID Cloud The service offering in the cloud allows
enterprises to reduce their operational
CGI's Cloud as a Service
dependency on server availability and
instead plan their operations around
service availability, which is much more
dependable and assured based on service
level agreements functionality for the
different users of the system to manage
their operations independently and easily.
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Managed operations.
Assured service
CGI has set up a M2M global services
organisation to ensure service availability,
across geographies and to provide
enterprises a managed operation.
The organisation has responsibility, not
only to ensure the cloud operations and
the platform is running but also to keep
service available at all times. Support
for enterprises is also enhanced by
provisioning for second and third line
support and the availability of single point
of contacts.
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Harness the benefits
Enterprises can now develop applications The platform provides a new vision of
that integrate complex systems and enterprise systems that bridge the gaps in
communications networks in a seamless embedded M2M computing technologies,
and interoperable manner. With the CGI allowing businesses to reap the full
M2M Business Enablement Platform, the benefits from connected devices and
challenges they used to face in developing eliminating many of the unnecessary costs
such applications have become a thing of in customer support.
the past.
The adoption of M2M systems has
With plug and play options that allow traditionally been challenging. With CGI’s
addition of devices or networks, we make M2M Business Enablement Platform, there
it possible for enterprise to manage their is a huge potential to change the business
applications and reduce the complexity and delivery models. That is not all. By
of managing connected devices. adapting to a new mode of service delivery,
The business intelligence capabilities of the enterprises connect better with their
M2M Business Enablement Platform can customers and build new relationships.
be applied across a wide array of vertical
services and across diverse industries.
M2M BUSINESS ENABLEMENT PLATFORMCGI GROUP INC.
Tel: + 44 (0) 845 070 7765
E: info.eu@cgi.com
www.cgi-group.co.uk/MBEP
cgi.com
With over 68,000 professionals in 40 countries, CGI fosters local accountability
for client success while bringing global delivery capabilities to clients’ front doors.
Founded in 1976, CGI applies a disciplined delivery approach that has achieved
an industry-leading track record of on-time, on-budget projects. Our high-quality
business consulting, systems integration and outsourcing services help clients
leverage current investments while adopting new technology and business
strategies that achieve top and bottom line results. As a demonstration of our
commitment, our average client satisfaction score for the past 10 years has
measured consistently higher than 9 out of 10.
© 2013 CGI GROUP INC.
All rights reserved. This document is protected by international copyright law and may not be reprinted,
reproduced, copied or utilised in whole or in part by any means including electronic, mechanical, or
other means without the prior written consent of CGI.
Whilst reasonable care has been taken by CGI to ensure the information contained herein is reasonably
accurate, CGI shall not, under any circumstances be liable for any loss or damage (direct or conse-
quential) suffered by any party as a result of the contents of this publication or the reliance of any party
thereon or any inaccuracy or omission therein. The information in this document is therefore provided
on an “as is” basis without warranty and is subject to change without further notice and cannot be
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