M2M leader Ericsson and big database specialist SAP AG are to jointly market and sell cloud-based M2M solutions and services to enterprises via operators around the globe. The solutions, says Ericsson, will be based on a combined software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering from Ericsson and SAP within M2M.

The tie-up sets the scene for the development of the market with the arrival of really big "thing" sets - perhaps involving tens of thousands and even hundreds of thousands of M2M end-points. Big projects like that will require significant cloud-based processing power to gather the data in near real time and store it all as huge data sets.

SAP is therefore an ideal partner here with its extensive database expertise and global support network. Ericsson says the two companies will together be able to offer the global reach and end-to-end capabilities that telcos' biggest enterprise customers are looking for.

The pair will continue to work through telcos with the new arrangement and, as well as offering global reach, the cloud solution should give telco partners the added advantage of minimal up-front investment and faster time to market for their enterprise customers.

Earlier this year Ericsson also announced an important tie-up with Gemalto (see - Ericsson and Gemalto to team up over subscription management) to use that company's Machine Identity Module (MIM) technology. That techology essentially frees up the connectivity piece by enabling M2M network builders to switch networks with a software instruction, rather than be stuck with embeded SIM technology. As the threat of 2G network 'sunsetting' becomes an increased possibility around the world, this sort of capability will become essential so that long-life M2M applications can switch networks as 2G frequencies are progressively given over to LTE.