2010 A day in the life |
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By CBDi Forum
01 May 2003 | CBDi Forum, special to SearchWebServices.com |
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Market Analysis
2010 A day in the life
Ben made the CART (City Area Rapid Transit) with seconds to spare. He
flung himself through the door as the automated voice said "mind the doors please" and the light railcar moved off without delay. Ben gave no thought to ticketing because he had just the previous day renewed his season ticket. The Travel Company had sent him a reminder, and when his schedule showed he was handling administration tasks, his PDA had prompted him to consider the renewal options. He had chosen the FlexiTravel option, selecting a plan that was recommended for someone with his profile. A few years ago he had selected a basic plan, but now the profile had been adjusted to reflect his aggregate work and leisure travel needs that enabled him to use multiple transport types including the CART.
Every time Ben took a journey the removable smart card in his wireless PDA was scanned by the travel operator, automatically invoking a Travel Company service - RecordJourney, that logged the elements of individual journey details. However today he was reminded of the transaction, because part of the service execution required him to confirm that it was indeed Ben that was traveling. When he renewed his season ticket the previous day, Ben had changed his authentication process with the travel company. As his new profile included multiple transport types as well as overseas travel, the recommended security level had been changed to cover the increased commitment, and risk. So Ben received a telephone call for all transactions over an agreed amount plus a small number of random checks relative to the risk involved, which simply asked him to repeat three words selected at random from his original voiceprint recording, to confirm the transaction.
When Ben had upgraded his PDA last year, he had specified two biometric authentication options, covering voice and thumbprint. There was no real inconvenience though, because Ben already subscribed to AUTHME, the leading authentication service worldwide which he had selected as his preferred authentication method, when he initially signed up with the Travel Company.
AUTHME is a personal service that validates the identity of anyone,
anytime, anywhere. AUTHME had started some ten years ago with multi
choice questions such as Mother's maiden name, favorite pastime and pet's name, but had quickly graduated to similar multi choice options using biometric technologies as they became widely used. Every time Ben traveled, the Travel Company requested a confirmation service with AUTHME passing a random, encrypted selection of Ben's details and receiving back a response that hopefully said OK.
It was a few years ago when Ben set up his account with AUTHME. At
that time he was pretty disgruntled that he actually had to visit a Notary in person, in order to have his finger and voice prints taken, and to provide multiple evidence points to prove his identity. Fortunately he only needed to do that once, and providing he never wants to change his authenticator, he can always rely on the remote service. Sometimes Ben thinks he is in the wrong business, because authentication seems like a license to print money, as he is using the service more and more, and has a positive disincentive to change to a new authenticator because of the hassle of visiting a Notary. To be fair, most authentication services are provided as part of the core service offering, because it is in the interests of provider and consumer to ensure that the service is provided to the right person.
Three stations down the line, Ben gets off the CART. His PDA is canned by the transport operator and an electronic token exchanged to operate the barrier. He walks swiftly to the regular station car park where dozens of autos are ready and waiting for Travel Company customers. Using his wireless PDA Ben selects Travel/RentalCar/PreArranged and a location, make, color and registration number is returned. A real time service - PickUpVehicle, has been executed with the Travel Company, and a vehicle from the reserved demand pool for that location has been made instantly available.
Using the electronic token provided by the PickUpVehicle service, Ben
unlocked the car doors with a direct connect to the vehicle wireless
network and provided confirmation of his identity in order to start the motor, and drove away. Thank goodness for service technology he
thought, no more worrying about losing his car keys. And he recalled how long it used to take to pick up a hire car; whatever frequent user plan he had it never took less than 20 minutes because the locations were always remote. Being a business person, he sometimes did momentarily think of the massive reduction in headcount that rental car operators had achieved. However he wasn't sure that was all good news, because the increasing dominance of the Travel Company and its two competitors worldwide has reduced the rental car companies to commoditized logistics operations.
More importantly how else would he be able to afford to have the most
cost effective transport in every location and country he visited? The integrated transport scheme provided by the Travel Company made life so much easier, and allowed him to make considerable cost savings, as well as easing his conscience by doing his bit to save the planet. He remembered back to 2003 when he first saw onboard services being used for something sensible. His insurance company he recalled had announced trials of its "pay as you drive" car insurance. This scheme provided variable car insurance where the premium was calculated in real time depending on your location, time of the day, etc, using an onboard black box, which included GPS and GSM technology to execute services with the insurer. What was really forward looking at that time, was the insurance company were already using the facility to provide value adding services including emergency assistance and real time route finding.
These early trials had proved the technical case quite quickly and easily, and once reliable authentication services were available, companies had moved very rapidly to introduce collaborative services, which removed much administrative hassle, headcount and middlemen. It didn't take long for the insurance company to adapt its scheme to provide flexible pay as you go schemes that were based on the positive identification of the traveling person AND the vehicle. Once you have strong ID of both, the exact knowledge of who is traveling, and with what transport device (asset), you first move away from separate car insurance and travel insurance to one integrated scheme. But it is a logical and highly attractive extension to bill for the actual usage of the insurance cover AND the transport method (car, train, tram, bus etc).
When he reached his destination Ben dropped the car at the rental
location, which for him doubled as a car park; and being a sunny day he walked the last kilometer to his destination. As he walked away from the rental location his PDA bleeped to signal a time, location and context sensitive message - would he like to take a pedal cycle or scooter for the last city leg of the journey, and also would he like to consider a soft top rental car for his return journey that evening. As the weather forecast was fine, the Travel Company had negotiated a great rate for the upgrade.
Ben decided to walk, and he also decided to downgrade on his return
journey, because he had seen a great weekend deal for classic sports cars, and he figured that by making just three downgrades on work related journeys, he could get a Porsche 911S Targa for the weekend at no extra cost without exceeding his weekly travel budget.
As he walked away he also turned off his time and location notifications; he knew that his PDA would switch seamlessly between wireless zones and 3G and if he didn't set the appropriate filters, he would be assaulted by a veritable deluge of coffee shops, music stores and book shops, all with special offers just for him. These unsolicited messages, or spray as they have become known, have replaced spam as the unwanted system noise. But he didn't turn off his authentication confirmation service. Yet another irritant are attempts to impersonate others. Fortunately the authenticator services undertake call-backs and whilst it's annoying, everyone is keen to know if someone is trying to impersonate them, and they can assist by identifying spoofing, as it has become known, when it happens. For every gain there's always a little pain.
Coda
When Microsoft made its first announcements around Web services in
mid 2000, many people criticized the very futuristic nature of the example applications used in the announcements. Way too advanced and
impractical for many years to come. More to the point these futuristic examples didn't actually change the process, they merely made life a little easier, with trivial advantages such as fewer sign-ins. What is coming clear is that collaborative working can enable profound change to existing models that improve the service delivered while reducing overheads, costs, headcount and creating real opportunities for value adding business. In our recent report on modeling for SOA, we stressed the need to look at the problem space from an ecosystem perspective. Looking at the needs of the traveler in an holistic manner immediately shows real opportunity for radical reengineering of conventional processes, currently stuck in 50 year
old time warps.
Today things have moved along apace, and the scenarios I have sketched above are perfectly viable. Just this week we noted the Norwich Union has announced its "pay as you drive" insurance scheme, supported by IBM and Orange in the UK. We note HP already have available a PDA which includes a biometric thumbprint reader with built in wireless networking. Last November we reported on NetDecisions and Fluency that are making real headway in voice based components and services.
This month I reported that BT has launched an authentication service
called URU which they plan to evolve to support the form of applications discussed above.
What's really interesting is how new technologies change business models. Time and time again we see the pattern repeated that early usage is undertaken by extension of today's business models, but at the point where the technology and the supply and support systems get near to some level of maturity, and in this case authentication is clearly a major pre-requisite support system, then innovative companies launch revolutionary applications and business models.
You may be thinking, 2010, it's awfully close, but as we say, while there is often little measurable change in one or two years, the measurable progress in a decade is often dramatic.
We welcome feedback.
Links
Norwich Union has signed a deal with IBM and Orange UK to provide the technology and telecommunications for its revolutionary "Pay As You Drive" insurance program.
The new HP iPAQ Pocket PC for mobile professionals, with versatile
wireless solutions and integrated security now includes a Biometric fingerprint reader.
Copyright CBDi Forum Limited 2003. The CBDi Forum is an analysis firm and think tank, providing insight on component and web service technologies, processes and practices for the software industry and its customers. To register for the weekly newswire click here.
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