UC Berkeley Technology Exchange 2005 Viable Sensor Network Industrial Ecosystem & Role of Zigbee/TinyOS Technology Exchange 2005 Jim Schoenduve Chipcon

UC Berkeley Technology Exchange 2005 Industrial Ecosystems? An industrial ecosystem is a community or network of companies and other organizations in a region who choose to interact by exchanging and making use of by-products and/or energy in a way that provides one or more of the following benefits over traditional, non-linked operations: –increased systemic energy efficiency leading to reduced systemic energy use, –increase in the amount and types of process outputs that have market value. (Gertler 1995, as cited by Lowe et al. 1997)Gertler 1995Lowe et al. 1997

UC Berkeley Technology Exchange 2005 Industrial Ecosystems Viewpoints Perscriptive or Descriptive? –Prescriptive The way things oughtta be! –Descriptive The way things are now.

UC Berkeley Technology Exchange 2005 Chipcons Unique Perspective TinyOS Zigbee Chipcon Defacto Radio Chipcon Defacto Radio TinyOS vs. Zigbee Chipcon is agnostic! Chipcon has a broad view of industry efforts; has over 5000 customers doing chip level adaptation of various Chipcon devices.

UC Berkeley Technology Exchange 2005 The Industrial Ecosystem Prescriptive (The way things ought to be): –A self sustaining ecosystem is when there is a convergence in maturity of the following: –Markets »An economic imperative exists to deploy solutions –Capital »Sufficient capital is available to fund development and deployment of solutions –Technology »Hardware and software maturity exists such that solutions can be deployed to serve an economic imperative –Ideally, all three reach maturity simultaneously.

UC Berkeley Technology Exchange 2005 TinyOS Descriptive View (the way things are!) Markets –Economic imperatives for deployment are being validated for small networks –Huge sensor networks are not so prevalent as candidates for possible deployments Capital Funding –Academic and Government Sources –Internal Corporate Funding –Venture Capital Funding Technology –Hardware availability accelerating. –Software infrastructure still in a very dynamic state of change

UC Berkeley Technology Exchange 2005 Zigbee Descriptive View (the way things are!) Markets for Zigbee –Existence of a standard is causing exploration by Fortune 100 corporate interests. –Those owning huge sensor networks are exploring Zigbee Capital –Internal Corporate Funding Predominant Source of Funding –Venture Capital Funding Too much to too few companies! Technology –Hardware availability accelerating. –Software infrastructure just emerging now

UC Berkeley Technology Exchange 2005 Threats to the Stability of the Industrial Ecosystem for TinyOS/Zigbee Markets –Overhype may threaten reputation of the community. –Economic imperatives for deployment for large networks are still being assessed. (and have been abandoned by some already.) Capital –Academic funding in jeopardy? –Will the time horizons of software and hardware maturity match the time horizons of the VC community?

UC Berkeley Technology Exchange 2005 Threats to the Stability of the Industrial Ecosystem for TinyOS/Zigbee Hardware maturity on track (little threat) –Hardware adaptation from other markets supporting the Tiny/OS Zigbee effort The software systems are always the critical path –Software development is still a multi-year effort for products designed for industrial product deployments. –Will the standards tube sock be sufficient to drive adaptation of a common set of hardware and software or will it fragment?

UC Berkeley Technology Exchange 2005 What to watch? Market hype… –Lets match expectations to reality Venture funding –Watch inflows and breadth of companies funded. –Watch time horizon expectations Technology –Consolidation or Fragmentation of Software? –[will the tube sock standard fit enough applications?]