We’re seeing the same effects in asset tracking. Often, SensorLogic Cirrus deployments will start with a hundred devices in a matter of days after provisioning, and quickly scale to thousands. It’s the same phenomenon profiled in Schumacher’s book. Take a common, in this case multi-tenant, infrastructure, produce a high yielding application and the economics of the investment quickly dictate the need to scale the use for maximum impact.

Asset tracking applications are a “killer app” for Cloud Computing. On it’s own, the application’s infrastructure is inherently complex with multiple, proprietary device types, wireless data services, systems management for the devices and the hardware, and complex data requirements. It’s an NxNxNxN problem that’s greatly simplified and seamless when encapsulated by the Cloud. The Cloud company, i.e. SensorLogic, is the service provider and reduces the complexity to be analogous to what I would call “the asset dialtone.” You just expect the service to be there to monitor and track your assets.

Just like in Schumacher’s book, where those who invested in small, simple projects created sustainable and scalable economic benefits, it’s now the developer who uses the Cloud, and its mult-tenant infrastructure, to instead focus on creating value for their company by working at the asset application layer and aligning it to the needs of the business. The economic benefits are immediate, sustainable and scalable. Small things really are beautiful.

• $115 billion in retail shrinkage losses worldwide, growing at 6% per year
• $50 billion in cargo theft losses worldwide
• $20 billion in damaged, unsaleable retail goods in the U.S.
• $10 billion in total fleet vehicle losses in the U.S.

It’s been fairly consistent that most retailers lose about 5% of the value of their product each year to shrinkage, and that the industry leverages a variety of methods and processes to combat the problem. However, the latest numbers demonstrate that retailers spent only $90 million on technology last year to combat the problem, down by 9% from the previous year. If retailers doubled their technology investment to $180 million, and reduced shrinkage by 1 percentage point, the hard savings is $23 billion. Cut the hypothetical numbers any way you like, the return is there.

Fortunately, the incremental spend would probably not have to be that great. The costs of a multitude of devices, i.e. GPS, CellID, RFID, and wireless data services are dropping rapidly. Telematics technologies are bringing increasing levels of sophistication to the way assets are tracked and can be totally configured to a company’s business process, right down to being integrated with retail, supply management or distribution systems.

A sticking point has always been the complexity of packaging the application together with the data, the devices and the network. SensorLogic has solved that problem with Cirrus, our Platform-as-a-Service, that not only makes those infrastructure issues easily manageable – we do it for you; but also now simplifies the development process with pre-built Widgets that can be used to create a powerful asset tracking application in days, not months. Today, we announced the capability to use those Widgets in a single step. That’s a giant step toward solving the asset loss problem in the world economy.

In our rush, and justifiably, to embrace everything Internet-related, we’ve somehow come to believe that everything connected to the Cloud  has relatively equal value. Asset tracking applications use GPS devices, CellID and RFID to track and monitor high-value assets associated with mission-critical business processes, i.e. cargo, retail and commercial goods, fleets, or even mobile workers. With the trend toward Cloud Computing, the information related to the movement and use of these assets is now available to create enterprise visibility. Maybe an individual pallet of Corn Flakes isn’t important, but thousands of those goods being shipped every day, worldwide triggers a chain reaction of revenue and profitability loss if they don’t reach their destination. Imagine the business process components of those goods – labor, fleet management, marketing costs and finally lost sales and dissatisfied customers. Look no further to the importance of this chain reaction than the recent announcement by Wal-Mart to take over the distribution of manufactured goods from its suppliers to ensure delivery to the retail store. The company doesn’t make an investment of this magnitude just to cut costs, it does so because it wants to control the point-of-sale, and create yet another competitive advantage.

Asset tracking in many ways is about optimizing the business process from production to consumption. The next frontier, enterprise visibility, is about creating a smarter business, by integrating information from thousands, even millions of tracked assets, with ways to optimize every aspect of the value chain from concept creation to consumption through ERP, supply management and CRM. Another quick example – insurance companies want to move toward a usage-based pricing model for vehicle insurance. Why? They simply don’t have a fine understanding of their cost-of-goods sold – the risks, based on driver behavior, that constitute what policies should really be priced at for certain types of drivers (those of you, like me, who lived through teen drivers, nod your heads). That’s why “Connecting Every Little Thing to the Cloud,” in the case of asset tracking, is the next frontier and so critical to business growth and profitability.

What’s interesting to me is that for many businesses, the drivers are different but the problems are the same. In some markets, productivity and operational efficiency are driving investments in asset visibility systems. Witness Wal-Mart’s recent decision to take over the shipping of its supplier’s goods to the store’s warehouses. For other customers, loss and theft prevention are keeping our customers up at night. Regardless of the business problem, there are common technology hurdles. These solutions tend to be complex for a number of reasons. First there is technology required to connect to the real world of mobile assets. This involves hardware, networks, software, integration and more. There is also the challenge of marrying new applications with legacy systems The costs associated with deploying even a simple asset tracking application today can be daunting, and its complexity is a hindrance into leveraging the information that can make a business smarter.

As I listen to the market, and respond with thoughts of my own, I put a proposition on the table – what developers of asset tracking applications need is a purpose-built platform that provides four distinct benefits that accelerate time-to-market and maximizes long term value and real ROI:

1. A platform that simplifies multi-device management and support across multiple networks;
2. Event management and business logic that provides meaningful and actionable information;
3. Pre-built, application-specific Widgets and a variety of Web Service APIs that enable rapid application development and integration;
4. Complete developer control and investment protection – the use of any standard development environment.

The result, and our mission, is to allow the market to rapidly build the most reliable enterprise asset visibility solutions that have an immediate and significant impact on real business problems. Speed business value.