Machine-to-Machine Communications for Cloud-Based Energy Management Systems within SMEs

Nowadays, in order to reduce costs and ensure a proper working environment for employees, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) concern themselves with the adoption of technologies and methodologies that could potentially help them efficiently monitor and manage resources. This paper starts with an overview on the benefits that Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications can provide to the business environment, since the technology can be used in a wide range of applications in order to ensure monitoring and optimal control functionality. The main purpose of the paper is to present authors' conceptual model of a Cloud energy management system based on M2M communications from sensors, which aims to help companies monitor and reduce energy costs while improving comfort at the workplace.