What is telematics ?
Telematics, also synonymous to M2M or Machine-to-Machine, is broadly defined
as communication between machines or between machines and a software application involving transmitting
and/or receiving application-specific data across a network.
Mobile Telematics, or Mobile M2M, makes use of cellular mobile network for the tranmission of application data.
The objective of enterprises adopting M2M is to enable remote monitoring and control of
purpose-specific devices to achieve greater business efficiency.
Some examples of M2M applications are:
Vehicle Location Tracking
Remote Security System Monitoring
Tele-metering
Remote Sensors Monitoring and Control
and many more ...
The key elements in a typical end-to-end M2M solution includes:
The remote machines or assets to be monitored or controlled,
Remote telematics units attached to the assets for remote communications and control purpose,
A middleware platform that mediates between the remote units and the backend application,
A backend application that is responsible for all the application logic in fulfilling the business objective of the solution.
However, most implementations of M2M solution today omit the middleware and resulted in the remote
telematics units being tightly integrated with the applications, thus making it extremely difficult for
the customer to enhance the application without going back to the original vendor.
