Well I have a lot of BI experience and I’ve worked with web services for large corporate ERP/CRM systems before. I can tell you that Buddy will make a mint in time but only if certain deals are struck.
BuddyAPI is a web service as far as I can tell. A device connected to the internet will send most likely a SOAP call to a dedicated BuddyAPI URL where data will be formatted and inserted to their client’s database aka BuddyVault. Buddy will then make the database universe available to tools like Business Objects or SSRS etc. Perhaps Buddy has custom views or stored procedures that can be run for the client in-house on their servers and then send back just the result set. I can imagine Buddy also offering some sort of MVC dashboard that a client could log in to, to view their data on a website without the need for in-house tools.
They key to Buddy, is that it need a deal with a company that has internet enabled devices that can call a web service / push data to them. For example, say Ford or Tesla sign up with Buddy, and each new vehicle has a 3G / 4G etc. internet enabled card in it and software for the engine management system to collect performance data and periodically send that data to Buddy when the engine management system detects a fault or is in need of service. Now say Ford have a deal with Buddy to get their customers vehicle data and on a nightly basis, Ford’s ERP / CRM connects to Buddy and downloads data for the previous day and generates a report of all customers who’s vehicle’s engine has requested a service or has a fault. The Ford customer service team read the report which might consist of hundreds or thousands of customers whose car needs attention, distributes the reports to their local service centre whose maintenance department telephones the customer to let them know their car has reported a fault or service request and needs attention; would they like to book their car in?
To Ford or Tesla etc, this type of situation is worth a fortune. It’s better than advertising as it is direct factual information right from the customer’s car engine via Buddy…. Ford would make huge profits off this situation, and so would Buddy… and me as a Buddy shareholder.
Perhaps as a side business, Buddy might sell the owner of the car a website MVC coded dashboard that the vehicle owner can log in to and it presents pretty pie graphs and data such as GPS routes taken, fuel economy, speed etc.. all uploaded from the car to Buddy… accessed by the owner on a website.
Similar thing might happen with the TV, refrigerator, dishwasher, home air-conditioned, lighting, home alarm system, pool pump, you name it..… and one that might be a huge windfall would be power meter boxes where the data is sent straight from the meter box to Buddy, then to Energex etc…
Whinge all you like about the 10 cents issue price and market cap, but if Buddy takes off on some great internet connected devices with economy of scale that they can store data on, and you’ll looking at several billions of market cap IMO.
