Singapore Management University Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University Research Collection School Of Information Systems School of Information Systems 1-2007 BusinessFinder: Harnessing presence to enable live Yellow Pages for small, medium and micro mobile businesses D. CHAKRABORTY K. Dasgupta S. Mittal Archan MISRA Singapore Management University, [email protected] C. OBERLE See next page for additional authors DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/MCOM.2007.284550 Follow this and additional works at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research Part of the Software Engineering Commons Citation CHAKRABORTY, D.; Dasgupta, K.; Mittal, S.; MISRA, Archan; OBERLE, C.; GUPTA, A.; and NEWMARK, E.. BusinessFinder: Harnessing presence to enable live Yellow Pages for small, medium and micro mobile businesses. (2007). IEEE Communications Magazine. 45, (1), 144-151. Research Collection School Of Information Systems. Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/726 This Magazine Article is brought to you for free and open access by the School of Information Systems at Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Research Collection School Of Information Systems by an authorized administrator of Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University. For more information, please email [email protected]. Author D. CHAKRABORTY, K. Dasgupta, S. Mittal, Archan MISRA, C. OBERLE, A. GUPTA, and E. NEWMARK This magazine article is available at Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/ sis_research/726 CHAKRABORTY LAYOUT 12/20/06 1:23 PM Page 144 PublishedNEW D inIRECTIONS IEEE Communications IN NETWORKING Magazine, 2007TECHNOLOGIES January, Volume IN 45, Issue 1, Pages 144-151 https://doi.org/10.1109/MCOM.2007.284550EMERGING ECONOMIES BusinessFinder: Harnessing Presence to Enable Live Yellow Pages for Small, Medium and Micro Mobile Businesses Dipanjan Chakraborty, Koustuv Dasgupta, Sumit Mittal, and Archan Misra, IBM Research Anuj Gupta, IBM Software Group Eileen Newmark, IBM Systems and Technology Group Christopher L. Oberle, IBM Global Services ABSTRACT convergence of presence-based applications across both enterprise and telecom networks is Applications leveraging network presence in being driven by the common adoption of signal- next-generation cellular networks have so far ing standards, such as the Session Initiation Pro- focused on subscription queries, where “presence” tocol (SIP) [3] and SIMPLE [4]. information is extracted from specific devices and In this article we present BusinessFinder, a sent to entities who have subscribed to such pres- service offering that leverages upon the underly- ence information. In this article we present Busi- ing cellular presence substrate to provide effi- nessFinder, a service that leverages the underlying cient, on-demand, context-aware matching of cellular presence substrate to provide efficient, on- customer requests to nomadic vendors. From demand, context-aware matching of customer our perspective, some of BusinessFinder’s fea- requests to nomadic micro businesses as well as tures make it one of the few early efforts to small and medium businesses having a mobile investigate the impact of presence-aware appli- workforce. Presence, in the context of Business- cations in the small-medium business (SMB) Finder, is not simply limited to phone location and segment, especially in emerging economies (e.g., device status, but also encompasses dynamic India, China, Russia, and Brazil) where small attributes of vendors (both “mobile” and “static”), and medium businesses constitute the fastest such as their current availability and workload, growing segment of the economy. (As an illus- expertise and reputation. Besides presenting the tration, [5] forecasts that the SMB sector in architecture and implementation of BusinessFind- India will spend $7.7 Billion on IT in 2006, with er with a centralized source of context, we also an annualized growth of 26 percent that is three describe early work on a novel resource-aware times the overall GDP growth rate). A key char- query routing algorithm that can efficiently sup- acteristic of such “emerging” markets is the port BusinessFinder query semantics in distributed highly decentralized and fragmented nature of presence environments of the future. consumer interaction with various business ven- dors — BusinessFinder is specifically targeted to INTRODUCTION enable easy, targeted interaction with vendors such as plumbers, florists, electricians, and auto Presence, loosely defined as the network’s ability mechanics who operate either as individuals to track and disseminate dynamic, contextual (micro businesses) or from relatively small (less attributes of individual devices or users (such as than five to ten individuals) shops (SMBs). a phone’s location or an individual’s status on an BusinessFinder enables the cell phone to be instant messenger client), is widely touted [1] as used not just as a traditional communication a “killer service” for next-generation cellular tool, but also as a business tool. Conceptually, networks. Examples of presence in existing user- BusinessFinder may be viewed as a “Live Yellow user consumer applications include live Instant Pages” service that factors in the actual mobility Messaging connectivity status of designated con- of both the requester (the customer seeking a ser- tacts, Push-to-Talk (PoC) or walkie-talkie service vice) and the vendors (e.g., the electrician or [2] on a cellular network and “buddy alerts” plumber offering a service) to perform on- (based on proximity of designated friends). demand matching. BusinessFinder differs from Increasingly, presence is also becoming a generic existing location-based services (e.g., lookups for interface for user-application integration across static restaurants, gas stations, and ATMs) by enterprise and service provider networks. This explicitly addressing vendor nomadicity. It con- 144 0163-6804/07/$20.00 © 2007 IEEE IEEE Communications Magazine • January 2007 CHAKRABORTY LAYOUT 12/20/06 1:23 PM Page 145 siders the instantaneous (or predicted) relative Finder’s services in a distributed-presence envi- locations of requesters and mobile vendors, as ronment. Finally, we present conclusions and a SIP-based presence is well as additional presence-driven attributes in discussion of open challenges. the matching process. While not directly a focus increasingly being of this article, BusinessFinder itself can become viewed by providers an intermediate “directory service” (e.g., as part USE CASE SCENARIOS AND CONTEXT and enterprises as a of a “Web-based mashup” displaying dynamic OURCES FOR USINESS INDER vendor information on a map, with associated S B F standard pub-sub “click to call” semantics). Companies having a BusinessFinder uses multiple contextual mechanism for mobile workforce can also use the features of attributes to determine a “nearby and available” BusinessFinder to manage their resources and vendor for a requested service. The following dynamic network- provide improved dispatch of their workforce to scenarios capture the typical usage pattern of related events, with serve customer requests. BusinessFinder: a Presence Server BusinessFinder has three key features specifi- cally designed for conditions in emerging Alice, currently located at point X, issues an acting as an economies: SMS for “plumber”, indicating her desire to locate intermediate broker •It performs query lookups based on not just a nearby plumber. The telecom service provider the changing location of individual vendors, but uses localization technology to track both her loca- matching published also their additional presence attributes, such as tion, as well as the location of cell phones of regis- data to subscriptions. current workload, expected availability, service tered plumber. Her location is then matched with profiles and reputation, cost, and expertise. This that of a vendor (say, Harish), who is not just near ability to directly match consumer requests to to Alice, but also available. Availability may be individual mobile vendors is particularly critical in expressed via either profiles (e.g., Harish indicates developing economies, where people typically do that he’s available from 7 am–7 pm on weekdays) not use well-established business aggregators — or via dynamic messages (e.g., Harish sends an for example, unlike the widespread use of the SMS indicating that he’s free to take another job). American Automobile Association (AAA) or Once Harish serves Alice’s request, the service also General Motors’ Onstar-based emergency auto- collects feedback from Alice to rank Harish and mobile assistance in the United States, automo- uses this ranking in future matches. bile-related assistance in India is typically provided via direct, ad hoc negotiations with the It is easy to envisage additional scenarios nearest mechanic — and mobile phones are often conforming to this “on-demand” service model. the only communication device used by vendors. For example, a customer in an unfamiliar loca- •Feedback about the service quality of indi- tion with a car problem at night may use Busi- vidual vendors from prior users of BusinessFind- nessFinder to connect to a “locally available” er is explicitly used in the query matching auto mechanic, or an office executive desiring to process to return “better ranked” vendors, when- pick up flowers en route to an evening engage- ever available.