Location Based Services – April 25, 2008

The Time is Now for 21st Century Leadership

By G C Network | November 10, 2013

I’ve just had the opportunity to preview my good friend Melvin Greer’s newest effort, “21st Century Leadership: Harnessing Innovation, Accelerating Business Success“. Now in pre-release, this book highlights the compelling…

Public Cloud IaaS : A Price/Performance vs. Security Analysis

By G C Network | October 25, 2013

Industry’s transition from custom made, one-of-a-kind IT infrastructures to the standardize, commodity based cloud paradigm is well on it’s way. IBM’s recent “Under Cloud Cover” study highlights the rapidly of…

Catch the Cloud with DorobekINSIDER LIVE!

By G C Network | October 17, 2013

  Yesterday I thoroughly enjoyed an opportunity to participate in the DorobekINSIDER LIVE edition on cloud computing.  The conversation was both lively and informative.  Joining me on the show were:…

Cloud Shines Brightly as Future of Disaster Response IT

By G C Network | September 14, 2013

The call for help began as a rumble. Twenty miles beneath the ocean’s surface, a rupture in a massive tectonic plate ripped a 310 mile-long break in the sea floor,…

NCOIC/NGA Demonstrates Use of Cloud in Disaster Response

By G C Network | September 5, 2013

     When the world’s next major earthquake, tsunami or other disaster hits, military, government and civilian NGA project is available on the NCOIC website. responders will need to manage and…

NBC4 Puts On A Great GovCloud Show !!

By G C Network | August 25, 2013

NBC 4 in Washington, DC highlighted government cloud computing today as part of their GovInnovate show. Below is just a taste of the informative public service they provided.  Go to…

OMB’s Evidence Memo: A Call for Cloud Services Brokerage

By G C Network | August 21, 2013

by Ray Holloman and Kevin Jackson In a late July memo the Office of Management and Budget requested cloud services brokerage. Well, not in so many words. Rather, OMB requested…

Cloud Services Brokerage Lessons From Alex Rodriguez, Baseball’s Trade Deadline

By G C Network | August 8, 2013

( A guest post from Ray Holloman, NJVC Corporate Communications) Two stories sat atop baseball’s marquee in the final days of July. The first was the non-waiver trade deadline, baseball’s…

Lessons Learned: VA Cloud Email Termination

By G C Network | July 17, 2013

According to a Federal Computer Week article by Frank Konkel, The Department of Veterans Affairs terminated its five-year, $36 million cloud computing contract for email and calendaring services with HP…

Deconstructing Cloud: An Excellent Guide to the Cloud Computing World

By G C Network | July 15, 2013

On an almost daily basis, I’m approach for my views on “cloud computing technology”.  Although typically innocent in nature, I always cringe at the thought of enduring yet another hours…

INmobile.org is a exclusive community for executives in wireless industry. As a member, I have the opportunity to participate in a number of interesting discussions about mobile and wireless technology. Here’s a summary of the points made in a recent discussion about location based services. Thanks goes to Adam Zawel for this excellent summary.
CARRIER’S ROLE
While no one suggests that operators should EXCLUSIVELY focus on their own location-based applications, there is debate about how fully the carriers should embrace the open 3rd party route:
Ashish Thomas from Singapore Telecom agrees with Walt Doyle of uLocate:
“the business models are simply not there yet to merit or justify one route or another…if a carrier goes the third party way there is fear of losing (or diminishing ) a potentially large revenue source”
Lloyd Williams from NewStep Networks adds:
“…High volume services with relatively generic functionality that can be applied across a broad base of users is ….[the operators’] sweet spot. Highly customizable applications are more of a challenge and therefore the internet model works better.Most comments, however, focus squarely on the value to carriers (and especially the ecosystem overall) if carriers focus on location as an “enabler”,
Asais Sudit, CEO of LOC-AID Technologies says:
“Inter-carrier raw location data, along with some additional attributes, will create the necessary ecosystem for third party developers/channels to make location an indispensable part of mobility.”
Tony Rose from Drop In Media adds:
“…opening up the location API’s to developers and create a competitive environment where the best applications will float to the top.”
Matt Kapp, CEO of Ozmota says:
“Location is a key variable to many innovative applications, including the ability to create new marketplaces from the virtual representation of space.”
Larry Corvari (a regional U.S. service provider executive) says he wants to provide
“open access via a standard set of published web objects” and support his enterprise customers with presence and LBS capabilities.”
Paul Nerger, dotMobi suggests
“If I was an operator, I would open up and start by publishing my data via OpenCellID.”The carriers can provide value on top of a free or low priced location API service:
Matthew Roth from StudioComm (WPP agency) says:
“… it makes much more sense to open up the location APIs and charge for access to the demographic data of the subscriber.… combined with lat/long within a mobile web or SMS based campaign would provide the necessary catalyst for brands and marketers to embrace mobile in the same ways they now embrace the Internet.”….In any case, the ecosystem may not wait around for the carriers too much longer:
Kevin Jackson of Sirius Computer Solutions:
“Absent industry-wide cooperation and adoption of an open source philosophy, competition and consolidation will force many carriers to fail.”
Ole Jakob Thorsen, Arctic ApS CEO describes a start-up solution that can turn Kevin’s warning into reality.
“…any service provider with access to user SIM cards can build any type of LBS without even telling the operator about it”
Follow me at https://Twitter.com/Kevin_Jackson

G C Network