M2M communication is a broad label describing a technology which enables connected devices to communicate without human assistance. It allows virtually any sensor to communicate, which opens up the possibility of systems monitoring themselves and automatically responding to changes in the environment.

Switching over to wireless has made M2M communication much easier and enabled more applications to be connected. IoT devices often use M2M communication when passing data back and forth. Only occasionally is the data displayed to a person.

There are many more examples and it's easy to see why machine-to-machine communication has so many applications and how deploying M2M systems makes sense for many sectors.

For more data science definitions, check out our other videos in this series.