Coopetition in M2M Ecosystem - The Case of Smart Cities

During recent years, there has been an increasing interest in the potential opportunities that can be attained with promoting Smart Sustainable Cities (SSC); a concept that can be reached based on Information and Communication Technology (ICT). The SSC concept is then considered achievable by horizontal integration of participating industries in its ecosystem in order to empower sustainability. This approach requires cooperation and sharing resources among co-existing multiple industrial verticals as well as collaboration among competitors (Coopetition). As a result, Machine to Machine (M2M) communications, as the most relevant subcategory of ICT in this context, requires proper coopetition patterns in its ecosystem. In this paper we identify the major roles (activities) in the M2M ecosystem in the context of Smart Cities. Next we define the actors who are capable of performing these roles and present a diagram showing plausible business relations among them. Eventually we discuss the complexity of resources in this context and present different forms of sharing resources among participating actors that is based on coopetition.