Location-based technology is not new, yet we definitely seem to be getting closer and closer to the proverbial "tornado" as location-savvy technology providers are emerging and innovating at a faster rate than ever before.
The space has really caught fire as of late due to combining location-aware technology with social network applications and the pervasiveness of smartphones. This combination has really provided the foundation for the space to flourish. And it has. Companies like Where.com, PlacePop, Placecast.net, and Urban Mapping are just a few examples of small companies with big plans and with geolocation at the heart of their business models.
Also, user-initiated, location-revealing "checking in" seems to be the latest craze, as Web applications such as FourSquare, GoWalla, and BrightKite are competing heavily, enabling an individual to see who they might know is also in attendance at an event. This can also help in the discovery of new places and meeting new people. The group location review site Yelp has recently added check-in capabilities as well.
And of course the likely suspects are in on the land rush too. Google's Latitude tells others that you allow to know your current location as you move about. Facebook and Twitter are rolling out location-based features as well, and Yahoo has already done an acquisition in the space with Indonesian-based Koprol (the "Asian FourSquare"). Even location-based games such as Booyah's MyTown are on the upswing.
Now that the technology exists, the value is fairly obvious. Clearly it makes sense for a travel company to provide trip-related content specific to a site visitor's nearest airport. As preseason football magazines discovered long ago with their regional magazine covers, locally relevant headlines are more likely to get attention (and therefore clicked), especially with sports teams and news. And there are clearly regional differences in product interest. Earthquake preparedness for example is probably much more eye-catching in Northern California than say hurricane preparedness which will resonate more in the Carolinas.
Remember all of those frequent membership cards the local sandwich shops hand out so you can get a free sandwich every seventh visit? Unless you are living by the penny, they are just too much of a hassle to carry around and manage. However, in a geo-savvy smartphone world, they should become unnecessary. A store ought to have the ability to keep track, with permission and incentives of course, of who is frequenting their stores and purchasing habits, and reward appropriately.
The customer loyalty possibilities are endless. Imagine the local ice cream shop being able to determine at the press of a button who its top twenty-five customers are, and hand delivering to these customers on their birthday an ice cream cake based on their flavor history.
Software companies are also using IP address-oriented technology to ensure location-based license compliance. MLB TV is using it to enforce blackout restrictions for watching streaming broadcasts of Major League Baseball. Business Intelligence applications are also integrating these types of products to gather site trending information, geographical response to offers, customer base location, and more. The use case list is practically endless.
However, there are still some challenges that don't make things entirely easy. Most Web applications are using
IP address related technologies and API's to determine location when someone visits a site, and then providing location-specific content to the visitor. However, this is problematic for browser-based smartphones, as they will typically show the IP address for the location of the carrier's hosting servers rather than the location of the smartphone.
For example, the location for a Blackberry will show as Toronto when using standard IP address-based technology, which is where RIM, the creator of the Blackberry, is headquartered. Of course, this is not useful for location-specific custom content on the device's browser.
Instead, smartphones are using carrier-specific location services or built-in GPS to determine location and therefore require user permission (they are usually prompted) for location to be used. This can make application development for location-based applications to become more complex with different requirements for different devices, and require device-specific applications to be built.
Auto-determined location-specific content can be dangerous however with search engine robots if sites are not implemented correctly with location-specific URLS (which sometimes requires performance trade offs) as robots will only see the content for the location of the servers from which they happen to be crawling from, and only index as much. This can hurt traffic potential.
Also, latitude and longitude coordinates can be obtained from site visitor-provided addresses to determine more precise locations. This of course provides for a whole new slate of use cases, and actually has been around for awhile.
All in all, despite some of the challenges that exist, powerful location-based technologies will continue to become increasingly sophisticated, and location-based applications will become more and more a part of our lives. Look for a lot to happen in this space in the next 12-24 months.
Acquisitions of companies such as Sun, BEA, Peoplesoft, Cognos, Siebel, Business Objects, and countless others the past few years have created a competition vacuum in the enterprise software space. For example, in the last five years or so, Oracle has spent over thirty billion USD purchasing nearly sixty companies. Microsoft has gobbled up eighty or so, IBM sixty, EMC forty and Hewlett-Packard approximately thirty-five. And these are just the giants.
The next tier of enterprise software companies also have pretty long lists of recent acquisitions. So one can imagine quite easily that this collective buying spree has created a deep void in the landscape of enterprise software, and as a result creates a tremendous opportunity.
After all, not much has happened in terms of new products and innovation in the space in the past several years, save for a handful of companies such as Salesforce.com, NetSuite and some of the various SAAS and open sources models that have emerged. But even much of this is nearing the ten year mark.
Interestingly, some of the Fortune 500 have annual I.T. budgets north of a billion dollars per year. And those that don't have budgets that are indeed quite large. This, combined with the fact that many of their primary systems were built and deployed in the 1990's (yes that's ten to twenty years ago) and are getting a bit "long in the tooth" as they say of aging horses, creates an interesting set of dynamics.
In addition, Cloud infrastructure is maturing and getting more firmly in place with more efficient computing resource and data storage models. It is quickly becoming the seedbed for future enterprise software innovation, not only in new software categories, but also in the traditional categories of business intelligence, analytics, data management, and employee and customer-facing applications.
All of these trends point to a "perfect storm" of opportunity. Their alignment ought to be attractive to a new wave of entrepreneurs that can take advantage of the emerging Cloud Computing trend in new and exciting ways. This will enable a great deal of new innovation in the enterprise/corporate information technology space.
So while much of the technology press is caught up in all of the Android-iPhone rage, Facebook privacy issues, and the Groupons and Four Squares of the world, quietly many technology veterans are taking notice of this enterprise software void and recognizing the opportunity for what it is.
As one example, Marc Andreessen of Netscape fame has recently indicated that his venture capital firm is investing in a "new wave" of enterprise software companies. Others are sure to follow this trend of focus including both entrepreneurs and investors.
In other words, I don't subscribe to the opinion held by some that enterprise software is dead. So over the next couple of years, I do expect a wave of new enterprise software companies to emerge, setting off another arms race in the corporate I.T. space as organizations battle it out to stay a step ahead of their competition.
Fortunately, companies like StrikeIron with our data-as-a-service external data and data verification components can benefit extensively from this trend, providing important pieces to these emerging applications with ease.
It should be exciting times ahead.
Location-based technology is not new, yet we definitely seem to be getting closer and closer to the proverbial "tornado" as location-savvy technology providers are emerging and innovating at a faster rate than ever before.
The space has really caught fire as of late due to combining location-aware technology with social network applications and the pervasiveness of smartphones. This combination has really provided the foundation for the space to flourish. And it has. Companies like Where.com, PlacePop, Placecast.net, and Urban Mapping are just a few examples of small companies with big plans and with geolocation at the heart of their business models.
Also, user-initiated, location-revealing "checking in" seems to be the latest craze, as Web applications such as FourSquare, GoWalla, and BrightKite are competing heavily, enabling an individual to see who they might know is also in attendance at an event. This can also help in the discovery of new places and meeting new people. The group location review site Yelp has recently added check-in capabilities as well.
And of course the likely suspects are in on the land rush too. Google's Latitude tells others that you allow to know your current location as you move about. Facebook and Twitter are rolling out location-based features as well, and Yahoo has already done an acquisition in the space with Indonesian-based Koprol (the "Asian FourSquare"). Even location-based games such as Booyah's MyTown are on the upswing.
Now that the technology exists, the value is fairly obvious. Clearly it makes sense for a travel company to provide trip-related content specific to a site visitor's nearest airport. As preseason football magazines discovered long ago with their regional magazine covers, locally relevant headlines are more likely to get attention (and therefore clicked), especially with sports teams and news. And there are clearly regional differences in product interest. Earthquake preparedness for example is probably much more eye-catching in Northern California than say hurricane preparedness which will resonate more in the Carolinas.
Remember all of those frequent membership cards the local sandwich shops hand out so you can get a free sandwich every seventh visit? Unless you are living by the penny, they are just too much of a hassle to carry around and manage. However, in a geo-savvy smartphone world, they should become unnecessary. A store ought to have the ability to keep track, with permission and incentives of course, of who is frequenting their stores and purchasing habits, and reward appropriately.
The customer loyalty possibilities are endless. Imagine the local ice cream shop being able to determine at the press of a button who its top twenty-five customers are, and hand delivering to these customers on their birthday an ice cream cake based on their flavor history.
Software companies are also using IP address-oriented technology to ensure location-based license compliance. MLB TV is using it to enforce blackout restrictions for watching streaming broadcasts of Major League Baseball. Business Intelligence applications are also integrating these types of products to gather site trending information, geographical response to offers, customer base location, and more. The use case list is practically endless.
However, there are still some challenges that don't make things entirely easy. Most Web applications are using IP address related technologies and API's to determine location when someone visits a site, and then providing location-specific content to the visitor. However, this is problematic for browser-based smartphones, as they will typically show the IP address for the location of the carrier's hosting servers rather than the location of the smartphone.
For example, the location for a Blackberry will show as Toronto when using standard IP address-based technology, which is where RIM, the creator of the Blackberry, is headquartered. Of course, this is not useful for location-specific custom content on the device's browser.
Instead, smartphones are using carrier-specific location services or built-in GPS to determine location and therefore require user permission (they are usually prompted) for location to be used. This can make application development for location-based applications to become more complex with different requirements for different devices, and require device-specific applications to be built.
Auto-determined location-specific content can be dangerous however with search engine robots if sites are not implemented correctly with location-specific URLS (which sometimes requires performance trade offs) as robots will only see the content for the location of the servers from which they happen to be crawling from, and only index as much. This can hurt traffic potential.
Also, latitude and longitude coordinates can be obtained from site visitor-provided addresses to determine more precise locations. This of course provides for a whole new slate of use cases, and actually has been around for awhile.
All in all, despite some of the challenges that exist, powerful location-based technologies will continue to become increasingly sophisticated, and location-based applications will become more and more a part of our lives. Look for a lot to happen in this space in the next 12-24 months.