Imagine yourself landing at O’Hare early one evening. You grab a rental car and head out — to your hotel, or to the restaurant where you’re due to meet a business associate, or to the suburban home of a college buddy you haven’t seen in 10 years. You’re tired, and it’s raining, and suddenly you find yourself on unfamiliar streets, unsure which way to turn. So you pull over, place a call on your cell phone and speak the words “driving directions.” You’re prompted for your location and your destination, and then you hear exactly how to get there.
This service is offered by Tellme Networks Inc., a Mountain View, Calif.-based company that operates a carrier-grade network and answers high-volume phone numbers for Fortune 500 companies. To provide callers with accurate 24×7 driving directions through an interactive voice portal, and at the same time slash business costs and complexity, Tellme uses the Microsoft MapPoint .NET Web service, released publicly today at Microsoft’s Tech·Ed 2002 conference. The first of its breed, MapPoint .NET is a programmable XML Web service developed and hosted by Microsoft.
Using Web Services to Lower Cost and Complexity
The MapPoint .NET Web services model offers companies a cost-effective way to support location and mapping features in their business or consumer applications. In the past, businesses hoping to include location functionality in their customer solutions were forced to make a huge investment in Geographic Information System (GIS) tools, and employ developers proficient in GIS technologies. Moreover, companies typically had to license location data from up to a dozen information providers, then stitch together discrete sets of data on points of interest, street addresses, baseline maps and so forth.
Besides easing the development process, the MapPoint .NET model also spares companies from having to license, integrate, manage and update multiple data sources and provider agreements. MapPoint .NET aggregates location and mapping data into a single, subscription-based Web service. Subscribers avoid the cost of data management and can select only the services they need. Microsoft offers transaction- and subscription-based pricing models as part of its service agreements.
Application Potential Highlights Business Value of Location
The release of MapPoint .NET Basic Services 2.0 sets the stage for any number of compelling implementation models. The MapPoint .NET Locator Solution, for example, packages part of the MapPoint .NET Web services in a product that’s easy to purchase and deploy. Available from Microsoft, this packaged solution enables businesses to power their Web sites with location intelligence so their customers and other online visitors can find the business location that meets their needs.
Another usage model is a cellular phone that supports Wireless Access Protocol (WAP). A business traveler who lands at LaGuardia, for example, could input his location to the phone and pull in real-time information from the MapPoint .NET Web service that his company subscribes to, quickly learning the location of rental cars, hotels and customers. To take this scenario further, assume that this company’s workforce has a large Hispanic component. With just a few changes in application code, the user could be offered the information in English or Spanish.
The MapPoint .NET Web service can also help companies add value to existing business processes and operations by incorporating location intelligence. For example, a coffee company with numerous retail outlets throughout a city could use MapPoint .NET technology to help understand the relationship between sales and locations, using sales data stored in a business intelligence application. Analyzing a map with charts of daily sales by location and type of store could help the company understand why some stores perform better or worse than others.
