CHICAGO – Steve Pazol is CEO of nPhase. Based in Chicago, nPhase provides enterprise-class machine-to-machine (M2M) services to manage, monitor and control global assets.

Along with Sandeep Mehta, Pazol co-founded Professional Consulting Services, Inc. (PCS) in 1990. In 1993, they founded Mehta & Pazol Consulting Services (MPCS) in Pune, India. In 1998, they started ManageTheWorld, a subsidiary of PCS, which became nPhase in 2003.

Pazol has a degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Michigan. He has spent the last 17 years providing consulting and systems implementation services in the IT field. He worked for Burroughs Corp. and Unisys Corp. in Detroit and Chicago until 1988 when he began consulting independently.

He has spent the last four years working to develop the M2M market and has helped nPhase grow into one of the top M2M technology firms. He is the moderator of the first and only M2M web log, which is called M2Mblog.

Pazol has authored dozens of articles on a variety of topics in various technology journals and speaks frequently at conferences. He was the technical editor of Unicenter Advisor magazine for more than seven years and guest editor of Internet Security Advisor. He is also the technical editor and co-author of “Unicenter TNG for Dummies”.

In part one of a three-part Q&A, Pazol sat down with international expert Michael Muth to discuss M2M services.

Michael Muth: Does M2M differ around the world?
Steve Pazol: A lot of people don’t know what M2M is at all. We look at it as connecting machines, people and IT infrastructure. Some people view it as asset management, telematics or freight tracking.

In Europe, wireless coverage is much better than in the U.S. and it’s easier to implement. Still, it’s more difficult to deploy commercially. Vodaphone has separate companies in London, Italy and Holland. It’s almost like a franchise. You’re roaming. In the U.S., we have a few big carriers.

Once you have a communications agreement, there’s basically no roaming in the U.S. There are different complexities. The international wireless carriers are a little ahead of the U.S. carriers. Sprint and Cingular are our two partners. Cingular is GSM, which is the international standard. Sprint is CDMA, which primarily is U.S. oriented. They don’t roam.

One reason Sprint is interested in us is because global customers might want us to combine GSM and CDMA on a single bill. While Cingular has roaming agreements all over the world, it’s expensive when you roam for data. You get charged for every byte of data. On the Cingular network, you can get a lot of data for a good price.

If you’re roaming in Italy, while a couple pennies per kilobyte might not sound like much, it adds up as you go to megabyte plans.

For an enterprise to deploy a wireless solution, it’s still very complex both commercially and technically. That’s where we come in as a mobile virtual network enabler (MVNE) or mobile virtual network operator (MVNO). We act as the carrier, yes, but with significant value add. We deal with the communications and technological complexity.

It’s less of a compatibility issue. Carrier networks built primarily for voice and data are still a tiny portion of revenues. The applications are different, too. Mobile-originated BlackBerry handsets will let you get your e-mail. An M2M application might tell you the status of a truck or tank. Networks don’t let you do that easily. GPRS and SMS all function differently.

We make it all look the same. We have a middleware technology solution for these problems that basically make the wireless networks look like an extension of an enterprise network.

Due to our direct connections into the carrier networks, the latency was insignificant. Even with text messaging, it can be less than 5 seconds. We can track cars via GPS through our NOC to their application.

MM: I’ve read that Europe is ahead of the U.S. in terms of M2M implementations. Is that true?
SP: It’s not that Europe is necessarily more progressive. It’s that a lot of the largest current implementations are the result of regulations. They’ve implemented more regulations for automated meter reading especially in the Nordic regions. In one country, a consumer needs the ability to see how much energy he or she has consumed.

Since the utilities are required to do provide this, they have to network their meters. Large deployments happen quickly due to the regulations. Electronic cars in Europe will monitor cars and trucks.

In many countries other than the U.S., the landline telephone infrastructure wasn’t nearly as built up. In countries like India, getting a phone line used to take more than a year and be exorbitantly expensive. So many consumers and companies have gone right to wireless.

For example, if you’re trying to put a service like OnStar on the market and there’s a device that’s embedded in a car or truck, you have to get that device certified on carriers in different countries to get that radio on different networks. It’s a big cost to get that radio on different networks. Also, different countries operate on different frequencies.

We got a mixed reaction to the name and George W. Bush really wanted it. We did several focus groups that got very strong feelings. People either really liked it or disliked it. nPhase comes from a scientific bent. The “n” stands for infinite (like one to “n”) and “phase” comes from the term “phase change”. We really like it.