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Google Local Takes Search One Step Ahead

Google's location-based search technology is no longer a Google Labs project but has moved to its own Web site. Though the service, called "Google Local," is an important element of the company's unfolding advertising strategy, it is only an evolutionary step in the development of search technology overall.


Google Local is essentially a format that is integrated into Google.com. When a search on the home page yields relevant local results, they are tagged with a compass icon that links to the Google Local search results page.

Advertiser vs. Advertiser

On March 9th, Yahoo launched a similar technology -- called "SmartView" -- on Yahoo Maps, which gives users the option of labeling the map of a neighborhood or city with icons of stores, restaurants, entertainment spots, banks and community services. Clicking on the icons displays more information.

Google Local is commercially oriented, much like a search version of the Yellow Pages. "Being able to segment the advertising market by region and locality helps Google sell and continue to grow revenues from local advertisers who might otherwise be shut out by national and global advertisers," Meta Group analyst Tim Hickernell told NewsFactor.

The launch of the service allows Google to match Yahoo -- not in terms of search capabilities -- but with respect to advertising. Still, local search is considered a step toward a much more profound search experience. It is not an easy business.

Everything Is Search

"The search business is dominated by three players -- Google, Yahoo, and Ask Jeeves, with their Teoma search engine," Hickernell added. Ask Jeeves has been trying to shed its old image as a clunky question/answer search engine in favor of its new technology. Microsoft is developing its own technology, which will be woven into Windows and reportedly will operate off the task bar.

But some people in the search industry do not believe Microsoft will enjoy an advantage similar to the one it had when its Explorer browser sewed up Netscape's market. "Microsoft is to be respected but not feared," said Jim Lanzone, vice president of product management at Ask Jeeves.

"The hype is that Microsoft can control access to search," he told NewsFactor. But the value of search is its content -- that is, results, Lanzone says. Unless Microsoft develops search technology better than what currently is available, he maintains that people will expend the energy to go to the search engine of their choice.

"Everything is search," Lanzone asserted. "A lot of growth in search isn't coming from more people using it, but from people using it more — it's becoming the focal utility of their lives."

The Star Trek Angle

In the first Star Trek movie, the Voyager probe returns to the solar system as a veritable living body of knowledge housed within an awesome superstructure built piece by piece in its travels throughout the universe.

(Forget the fact that it called itself "V-ger." Despite its spectacular intellect, V-ger apparently could not figure out that its own name printed on the side of the probe was covered up with a little grime.)

The point is, the machine was essentially a search engine -- a physical one, in this case -- that never stopped changing. The same is predicted for Internet search technology. "We're still at the very early stages of search and of local search, in particular," Lanzone offered.

Sexy Subject

Searching in context with locality is more than just finding out where to get pizza. It becomes more profound as people are able to gain information about what is going on immediately around them. Lanzone considers the issue more than just woolgathering. Ask Jeeves plans to build a business around it.

"People see subconsciously where this is going," he added. "They're going to have their search buddy for everything, always, with this little unit that you take to baseball games, to concerts, on vacation, and down the street."

But the technology is in its infancy, and a tool like Google Local is but a baby step. "In some ways, the feeding frenzy going on among analysts and investors is pushing [expectations] beyond the capabilities that currently exist," said Lanzone.

"It's kind of a sexy subject, because everyone wants to know what's the next big thing in search. To the user, search has enough trouble with global results -- let alone local results."

Onyx Debuts '311' Call-In App for Local Governments

Onyx Software is targeting the local government sector with a new industry-specific application called "Onyx CitiServe." It is the vendor's first release of this technology for the U.S. market -- though it tested the waters in the United Kingdom with Onyx eShop, currently in use by more than 20 local authorities, the company said.


At first glance, it is an unusual subsector to target. Local governments are exceedingly risk-averse when it comes to new technology and even more exceedingly strapped in this era of sky-high federal and state budget deficits.

Yet, according to Amy Santenello, government strategies analyst at Meta Group, "the 311 market is hot right now."

"311" is the non-emergency standard phone number that many localities are providing to aid constituents in connecting to the right local resource. "It has become the de facto CRM application at this level of government," Santenello told NewsFactor.

"Commercial organizations for years have been leveraging CRM to deliver better service for their customers," said Ben Kiker, chief marketing officer at Onyx. "These customers are beginning to demand that same level of service from their local governments."

Who's in This Space?

In this particular subspace, Onyx Software will be going head to head with -- believe it or not -- Motorola. "They have a number of 311 implementations under their belt already, although not a lot of people realize that," Santenello said. Motorola was, in fact, the first vendor to offer a government CRM application at this level, she added, by leveraging its mobile-device research and interoperability capabilities.

"Onyx is going to need a strong success in the U.S. market to demonstrate its value over Motorola," Santenello said.

Multichannel and BI-Enhanced

Much of the battle, though, will be over perception -- not actual features. "CitiServe's functionality is quite similar to Motorola's -- plus, it has the broader understanding of the CRM market," says Santenello.

CitiServe is a multichannel CRM application that includes a citizen portal for people to go online to log and track service requests. The call-center scripts are easy to modify, Santenello noted, which is key functionality for municipalities that have to respond to events on a moment's notice.

Also, the application incorporates Cognos' business-intelligence engine to provide real-time analytics and reporting features. "If they can market that capability correctly, it will give them a big leg up," Santenello pointed out.

The product also includes integration adapters to common GIS and CTI systems.

Who Pays?

Onyx, of course, is not the only vendor to have noticed the growing demand for 311 applications among local governments. A number of vendors are expected to roll out similar products over the next few quarters.

"New York City's 311 initiative has really inspired the rest of the nation," Beagle Research Group managing principal Denis Pombriant told NewsFactor. "I would estimate that 40 percent of all U.S. states have similar initiatives at the state or municipal level."

Unfortunately, funding is tight in many localities. Indeed, a new survey by the Information Technology Association of America found that many federal CIOs are frustrated with the slow pace of e-government adoption and the funding problems for these programs at many agencies.

For this reason, Pombriant thinks a hosted e-government CRM application would do very well. "Governments can't afford the big upfront cost of a major new system, but it is relatively easy to build the cost of the hosted application into a government budget and let it live there."

The New Voice Choice

In the fall of 2000, business-technology managers at the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry had to replace a patchwork of five phone systems in the agency's headquarters. As they explored their options, they became intrigued by an emerging technology called voice over IP.


VoIP works by digitizing a voice signal, chopping it into packets, and sending them over a company's computer network or the Internet like data or E-mail. The packets are reassembled at the destination and, if they've traveled fast enough, end up producing a voice signal that sounds as clear and clean as a conventional analog telephone system. The technology promised to save the Minnesota department lots of money, provide better tools for collaboration, improve efficiency, and cut long-distance charges. In the long run, using voice over IP might even eliminate the need to operate separate voice and data networks.

But few large companies used the technology in the fall of 2000, and the state's tech managers were apprehensive. They worried that it was "all Buck Rogers stuff ... too out there," says Mary Benner, the department's VoIP project manager. But detailed discussions with networking vendor Cisco Systems convinced them that "maybe it's ready, maybe we can do it," Benner says.

The department deployed 300 Cisco IP telephones and additional software, hardware, and services at a cost of $435,000. More than three years later, Minnesota Labor and Industry is a true believer. One big benefit for the cash-strapped state government: The department has cut its monthly phone bill in half, from $21,700 to less than $10,000. Last summer, it expanded the VoIP program statewide to seven additional locations, and other branches of the Minnesota government are looking to follow suit.

So are many businesses. In an InformationWeek Research VoIP survey of 300 business-technology executives, more than 80% say their companies are either using (29%), testing (18%), or planning to deploy (34%) the technology. Sixty-three percent of those using VoIP say they're going to spend more on it this year than last year. Another indication of the technology's increasing popularity is its rapid growth. In 1999, IP-capable phone systems accounted for 1.4% of all North American business-telephony shipments and were valued at $71 million. By 2003, these systems made up 56% of the market and were valued at $2.0 billion, according to research firm Gartner. That growth will continue, Gartner predicts, and shipments of IP-capable phone systems in 2007 will constitute nearly 97% of the market and be valued at $4.2 billion.

What's behind the interest? "The technology has matured," says Akhil Bhandari, VP of IT and CIO for consumer-products packaging company CCL Industries Inc. VoIP "has been around for quite some time, and we're just now coming to think of it seriously."

Bhandari says he's interested in VoIP for several reasons in addition to promised cost savings. They include being able to access collaboration tools like instant messaging and video conferencing, the use of unified messaging, and the ability to have your phone number work in whatever office or location you like.

But Bhandari has been waiting for the technology to mature enough to be reliable and offer the same level of service and applications as conventional phone systems. He's now convinced and plans a pilot program by year's end.

More businesses are looking at voice over IP now that many of the performance and cost concerns have been resolved. Early systems would drop voice packets or deliver them late, causing voice conversations to be choppy or garbled. And, like most new technology, early systems weren't cheap. The main concerns survey respondents have about deploying VoIP applications are performance, uptime, costs, security, and lack of bandwidth.

But many of those concerns lessen as experience grows. More than half of the respondents who are planning to deploy the technology worry about costs, both initial and ongoing. But fewer than a quarter of those already operating VoIP systems describe cost as a concern. In almost every category, users express less concern than those who haven't deployed it.

Tech managers in Minnesota were no different. At first, "we were scared to death," department CIO Cindy Valentine says. The department even kept old phones hooked up next to the IP hardware for a while, just in case something went wrong.

The technology appeals mainly because it saves money. Nearly three-quarters of those using, testing, or planning to deploy it cite cost reduction as the most likely long-range benefit. And 56% of companies using it expect a reduction in telecom expenses this year, compared with 17% who anticipate cost increases and 27% who say expenses won't be affected.

"The cost savings are just astronomical," says Ian Fleming, manager of information systems for Trinity Valley Electric Cooperative, a nonprofit group that helps provide power to rural areas of the country. Its phone network is a hybrid of analog and digital systems, with about a quarter of the co-op's 80 phone lines running on IP. The cooperative is in the process of moving to a pure digital environment.

Trinity Valley used to pay about $12,000 a month for phone service, including local calling, long-distance, and other costs. After pricing a full-blown IP system for 80 users, Fleming figures he'll be paying about $1,200 a month--a tenth of what he paid with the old system.

Sharp Laboratories of America has a simple VoIP deployment. Three years ago, the electronics company realized it could use a leased data circuit that connected offices in Camas, Wash., and Bangalore, India, to carry voice traffic. Staff in Washington have daily teleconferences with programmers in India, and long-distance charges were significant. Sharp upgraded its routers with a couple of IP cards and an analog voice converter from Mitel Networks Corp., which cost only a few hundred dollars apiece, and started routing IP voice calls between those offices. MIS manager Bill Longman says the company saved enough in long-distance charges to offset the cost of the leased circuit.

Sharp considered a broader deployment of VoIP, but vendor proposals were too complicated and expensive. "It was way over the top," Longman says. "They wanted us to be like the Cadillac of systems. Just give me a dial tone into the PBX, that's all I want right now."

So far, most voice-over-IP deployments are modest in scope, consisting of only a few hundred phones. Technology vendors have the largest deployments: Nortel Networks Ltd. supports 6,000 VoIP users, and Cisco has the world's largest deployment, with 50,000. But many businesses that are testing the technology plan even larger deployments.

For businesses that do implement voice over IP extensively, it offers more than just savings. Among the other long-term benefits users cite are improved productivity (71%); the ability to implement a universal in-box where employees receive both E-mail messages and sound files of voice-mail messages (51%); improved collaboration through tools such as videoconferencing (51%); the ability to provide anytime, anywhere access to company data (49%); faster responsiveness to customers (44%); and better support for globalization efforts.

The most common VoIP applications in use are IP-based phone systems (71%); connections with satellite offices (68%); remote access to telephony features (63%); and phone-based productivity apps, including IP conferencing, unified messaging, and multimedia training (62%).

But there are many other applications. At insurance provider LifeCare Assurance Co., about 56 IP phones in the call centers let representatives provide better customer service, says Jim Rogers, assistant VP for technical infrastructure. The $248,000 system includes IBM servers and Cisco phones, switches, and software. The phones are integrated with software that automatically answers calls and collects information, such as policy numbers, making it easy to forward calls to the right representatives. The phones are connected to customer databases, so when an agent answers, the customer's data pops up on the representative's phone screen. Calls are digitally recorded and stored for future reference. As part of the company's disaster-recovery plan, calls can easily be forwarded across the network to a backup location.

For many businesses, moving to a new building provides an opportunity to deploy the technology. Construction company Swinerton Inc. deployed its first 200 IP phones nearly two years ago when it moved into new headquarters. "We had maxed out the old space," says Larry Mathews, director of IT. "We kept building more cubicles, adding more offices, spending money to bring the phone vendor in to add more lines and move people around."

When the IT department analyzed the staffing required to support a conventional phone system, Mathews realized "we're not going to have enough people to support voice and data. So maybe we should look at this idea of a converged network."

Swinerton bought a system from NEC Corp. that included a server, 220 phones, two operator consoles, a voice-mail system, 11 Cisco switches, management software, and training, for around $230,000. One feature of voice over IP that appealed to Swinerton's IT staff was its centralized architecture. Managers can control the system and make changes to phones and user accounts from a single console. It's a feature that's become increasingly important to Swinerton as the technology is implemented in branch offices around the country. By July, Swinerton plans to have 700 VoIP lines in offices from Houston to Oakland, Calif., to Seattle.

Many businesses planning to deploy voice over IP worry it will take years to realize a return on the investment. A third of the survey respondents planning for the technology expect payback within one year, 29% within two, and 19% within three. But early adopters are seeing faster returns. Forty percent of those with systems already in place expect full payback in a year or less, 24% expect a return within two years, and 24% within three.

Concerns about security and reliability have haunted voice over IP for years. Since the phone systems are more like computers, tech managers worry that they'll have to reboot telephones as often as they reboot desktop PCs. And the prospect of constantly installing patches to fend off viruses, worms, and hackers isn't appealing either.

"It's packets, so it has a lot of the same security concerns as anything else," says Meta Group analyst Elizabeth Ussher. If IP voice traffic isn't properly secured, it could be copied, listened to, or redirected, opening up a business to major security risks, she says.

That's why companies must consider security from the start. "The security team needs to be involved now," Ussher says. "This is an application. This is going to be on your LAN, and you need to include this in your security audits."

Some users find voice over IP still isn't as reliable as conventional phone systems. Swinerton's Mathews says his NEC handsets are failing at an unusually high rate. "It's only every now and then, but once is too much." Out of 220 phones in the headquarters, Mathews has replaced about 25 in the last year and a half. "That's a failure rate you don't see in a [conventional phone] world," he says.

The key is to understand that a VoIP system is "only going to be as reliable as your data network," Mathews says. "And users aren't used to that. Everybody's OK with rebooting their computers once in a while. But their phones always work. If you're going to get into an environment where your phone doesn't work, it's going to cause problems."

Of the 86 surveyed companies using voice over IP, the vast majority consider the technology to be better than or equal to conventional service for advanced features (93%), ease of administration (85%), total cost of ownership (83%), vendor support (83%), end-user satisfaction (81%), and quality of service (69%).

The growing popularity of the technology has telephone companies running scared, since many VoIP calls completely bypass the circuit-switched public phone network.

Ultimately, the future of VoIP may be determined by regulators. The Federal Communications Commission recently ruled that some forms of computer-to-computer voice-over-IP calls are information services and aren't subject to the fees and taxes imposed on regular phone service. But that ruling covers only one kind of VoIP call--not those made from phone to phone. The FCC is seeking public comment on whether, and how, it should regulate other types of VoIP calls.

Congress is planning hearings to explore the proper way to regulate voice over IP. Sen. John Sununu, R-N.H., said last week that he plans to introduce a bill that classifies voice over IP as an information service, not a phone service. The bill also would give regulatory jurisdiction to the FCC and restrict the ability to impose taxes on VoIP service.

That worries states, which fear unregulated and untaxed VoIP calls will cost them substantial tax revenue. Many have started their own proceedings on how to regulate the technology. A lot of users and potential users aren't fans of regulation. More than two-thirds (68%) of the 300 survey respondents say voice over IP shouldn't be regulated. Of the 95 who support regulation, 90% say the FCC should handle the job.

Trinity Valley's Fleming isn't worried about regulation, at least for voice-over-IP calls that travel over a corporate network. "I can't see the government regulating a private network," he says. "There's no way for them to regulate the stuff that we do."

Vendors are rallying to protect the technology from regulation. Last week, a group called the Voice on the Net Coalition, which includes AT&T, MCI, Microsoft, and Texas Instruments, revealed plans to lobby in Washington against new regulation.

Quite a mix of service and hardware vendors are involved in voice over IP. Many local and long-distance phone companies have disclosed plans to offer services and hardware in an effort to keep customers' voice traffic flowing over their networks. But businesses are more likely to turn to a hardware vendor or a systems integrator than a service provider when they decide to deploy voice over IP. Less than 10% of business VoIP deployments include the active involvement of a telecom carrier, according to research firm Meta Group.

About 34% of users that InformationWeek Research surveyed bought their technology from a networking hardware vendor, 28% from a reseller or integrator, and 24% from a telecom company. Most of the survey respondents (55%) use or are planning to use networking leader Cisco to fill their needs in the next 12 months. Two other major network hardware companies--Avaya Inc. at 25% and Nortel at 24%--also ranked high.

How does a business choose a vendor? "Very carefully," Trinity Valley's Fleming says. It's important to find a technology vendor that has a plan to steadily improve, upgrade, and support its gear. Don't dismiss phone companies, he says, especially if you're worried that regulatory or legal changes could reduce or eliminate many of the benefits of VoIP. Phone companies have a better handle on that process than hardware vendors, he says.

One thing the InformationWeek survey makes clear is that those who are using VoIP are moving toward merging their voice and data networks into one communications infrastructure. Most respondents who are just planning to deploy the tech- nology say they haven't combined any of their voice and data networks. In contrast, 55% of those using VoIP say that half or more of their voice and data networks are converged into a single communications infrastructure.

There's mixed advice on how companies looking at VoIP should proceed. Swinerton's Mathews urges new users to "start small. You need to test your infrastructure." Businesses need to look closely at the features and functions their current phone systems offer to ensure that the VoIP system can match the important ones, he adds.

However, Minnesota's Valentine says starting small isn't a good way to benefit from the technology. "It doesn't work phone by phone," she says. By the time you buy the switches and the hardware needed to deploy the technology, "the cost on the front end doesn't lend itself to small pilots," Valentine says. "The sooner you do it, the sooner you'll start seeing the benefits."

Project manager Benner agrees. "We're still thinking of things we can do with this," she says. "The exciting thing about voice over IP is that the voice part of it is the tip of the iceberg."

Alcatel Launches Unified Communications As Web Service

Yesterday Alcatel announced the OmniTouch Unified Communication suite and two new phones: the IP Touch 4068 and 4038.


During the brief CommWeb received on the Unified Communication applications, an overall interesting strategy emerged. First, Alcatel dutifully went through the benefits of UC: namely increasing employee productivity and improving communication flow. But they also made it clear that they want to integrate this into all kinds of business processes. And the key integration variable, they believe, is the concept of Web Services, notably through XML.

Both the UC software and the new phones and their IP PBX support the Extensible Mark-up Language (XML) data exchange format, along with other standards such as SOAP, SIP and VoiceXML. They also support popular email technologies such as IMAP, SMTP, IBM Domino and Microsoft Exchange.

One key, as shown in the graphic display below, is that Alcatel sees itself both as a provider and consumer of Web Services. On the provider side, their PBX and UC systems bring real-time interaction to the table. On the consumer front, we're talking about the phone, whether hard or soft, which feeds off data it's getting from existing business-process apps (including, of course, unified communications stuff).

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A lot of this is just starting to get off the ground, especially in North America, where Alcatel is being cautious about how they roll this out to their resellers. They have established the Alcatel XML Developer Forum. It provides access to selected Alcatel XML APIs, including XML-Telephony, discussion forums, examples of implementations and other collateral materials. For an additional fee, you can get training, E-Testing and customer support, and professional services and project integration.

Overall, they have big plans:

"Alcatel's new unified communications platform provides Internet-based tools that let allow users tailor, control and manage phone calls, messages, personal information and directories in ways never previously thought of," said Tom Wilburn, general manager of Alcatel's North American enterprise business.

The Alcatel OmniTouch Unified Communication suite includes four applications (some of which might be apparent in the accompanying fuzzy screenshot):

My Messaging - A VXML-based unified messaging application handling non-real-time communications with a single multimedia mailbox (voicemail, email and faxes). It allows remote access to email via phone with text-to-speech and you can print or broadcast email and fax by voice command. It also offers message notification filters.

My Phone - An XML/SOAP-based real-time communications management tool. It transforms a multimedia PC - or PDA - into a business phone, complete with telephony features such as conference calling, unified directory access and call log.

Note it is browser based - not many softphones we see from other vendors are (and why not?). It's a piece that's been around for a few years now.

My Assistant - A web and VXML-based "find-me-follow-me" call routing and permissions application that defines when, where and by whom a person is to be contacted and diverts non-urgent calls to voicemail. It screens and routes calls based on caller ID (if it can get it) and time of day.

MyTeamwork - A set of collaboration applications.

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"Unified communications will help organizations rediscover the value of personal interaction," said Larry Velez, an analyst at Meta Group. "Human-to-human interaction is critical because as much as 80 percent of business knowledge is stored in the employee's head, not in databases and transactional systems. Companies that can access this information more quickly will have a distinct business advantage."

The Phones

As mentioned, the IP Touch phones also support XML and thus certainly factor into the Web Services theme here. But the first thing that jumped out at us when we looked at them were the integrated keyboard and the Bluetooth-equipped handset (that's right, no irksome telephone cord).

They work with the Alcatel OmniPCX IP-PBX as well as Alcatel's OmniTouch Unified Communications suite and, in theory, other XML based applications. Thus, the built-in alpha keyboard for getting at Web content and text messages, etc. The Bluetooth handset, and support for Bluetooth devices including headsets, is gravy.

We'll have to keep our eye on Alcatel. They could be onto something here.