Enabling Mobile Mapping
Total Cost of Ownership
This technology is of little consequence if the strategy for implementing a spatial ASP
does not have a compelling economic basis. Notwithstanding recent activities in the
dot-com world, there are solid, financially viable strategies to pursue a spatial ASP
model, particularly in the telecommunications industry.
One of the most attractive benefits for communications firms adopting a spatial ASP is
reduced capital expenditure for GIS solutions. By adopting a spatial ASP outsourcing
strategy, the operating company can eliminate a significant portion of the overhead
costs associated with internal support services. This includes the costs of software
licensing, upgrades, maintenance, technical support, hardware, IT support and high-end
desktop PCs. It also eliminates the need for backup, archive, storage and restoration
infrastructure because the ASP typically offers those services. This moves the telecom
operator from a capital budget to service contracts, a very important distinction.
Another compelling economic point is flexibility in configuration and implementation. A
spatial ASP solution often can be modified to suit the needs of individual users without
internal IT support. Because the spatial ASP is driven through a browser-type thin-client
application, there is little need for continual maintenance and training to take
advantage of the application. This translates into a faster time to productivity than a
traditional GIS operation, which can take months to build and staff properly.
Another critical point in the financial picture is the gain in productivity and the corre-sponding
decrease in costs associated with downtime. Since the SLA with the spatial
ASP would be in the 99%+ range, this translates into twenty hours or less of downtime
per user work year. This is considerably less downtime than many organizations’ inter-nal
LANs, and the cost-savings alone from this benefit could justify the ASP strategy.
Finally, a spatial ASP approach to managing data helps to eliminate the redundant
costs so common within an organization. In a spatial ASP, one land base data set can
serve engineering, marketing and maintenance departments – there is no need to
maintain multiple versions and copies of the same geographic information. Likewise,
the telecom company can leverage both economies of scale and economies of skill.
Because the spatial ASP maintains a core staff that services multiple accounts,
individual consumers can benefit from shared resources (for example, data center
hosting facilities and expert IT and GIS support), and companies can reconfigure their
internal staffing requirements to take full advantage of the outsourced spatial ASP.
Internal versus External ASP
One other key decision should be addressed: the strategy of outsourcing non-core
functions to a spatial ASP vendor or constructing the business unit within the current
organization to deliver those same services to the other business units and locations.
There are considerable merits to both strategies. First, by keeping these functions as
an internal business unit there is the satisfaction and “peace of mind” that comes with
having employees rather than vendors manage business-critical information. In some
cases, the resources and infrastructure in medium and large organizations are as well
prepared to deliver the spatial ASP services as an external organization. There is also
the benefit of familiarity with the culture of a corporation.
However, an internal spatial ASP still requires the same level of formality and structure
in establishing an SLA and other contractual standards to avoid falling victim to the
complacency that is also endemic in many corporations. If the internal spatial ASP
cannot fulfill its service mission, there is little chance it will realize the potential benefits.
In considering an external spatial ASP vendor, cost is the primary driver for most
organizations. The spatial ASP can provide opportunities for economies of scale and
economies of skill that an internal spatial ASP cannot offer. Because a spatial ASP
vendor provides core services to many different industries and clients, it can spread
overhead and infrastructure costs across multiple revenue-generating clients, whereas
the internal spatial ASP serves only “one” customer.
Second, an external spatial ASP is more likely to stay current with technologies that
further improve its services to the market. It will continue to re-invest in capital
improvements such as storage, servers, security, provisioning and communications
because of competitive pressures, while an internal ASP would likely be allocated an
operating budget that does not allow for regular improvements in technology.
Finally, the spatial ASP vendor is able to leverage industry presence with various
technology and content providers to create a better value proposition than an internal
ASP can assemble independently. By negotiating larger volume discounts and strategic
alliances, the spatial ASP vendor is able to provide a greater variety of options to the
consumer than would be possible otherwise and still provide a less expensive solution.
Licensing Considerations
There are several pricing models put forth by the ASP vendors. Although the process of
refining these models continues, there are two basic options for clients: unlimited
access and per unit.
Unlimited Access
This general pricing model allows a user to pay a fixed fee in exchange for access to
the application solution at any time, for an unlimited amount of time. For simplified
accounting purposes, usage typically is quantified, and clients are billed, on a monthly
or quarterly basis.
In this model, an organization that wants ten users to have access 24x7 would sign up
for services at a flat rate per month, per user. This model is attractive to organizations
that require predictable monthly or annual costs. It is also useful in organizations that
experience little change in their demands for service. If the ten users are likely to make
consistent demands over the life of the service agreement and the number of users is
not likely to vary, this pricing model is likely to suit the needs of the organization.
Most ASP vendors offer basic solution packages for this fixed fee, but also offer a
catalog of additional services that users can request. The costs for these additional
services are built upon the base fee per user. This allows greater flexibility per user and
provides a means for the user to customize individual solutions.
Per Unit
This option for pricing is analogous to residential telephone service or wireless calling
plans. There is a base price per unit, typically in minutes or in some cases, seconds,
that is charged per user when access is authorized to a given software solution.
This pricing also applies for a basic application solution and additional features or
components would be added to the base cost per unit. The system captures a user’s
login time to the system, as well as the logoff time, and then computes the
corresponding units for billing purposes. For simplified accounting purposes, these
times are aggregated to a monthly consumption and then billed accordingly.
This option is attractive to organizations with cyclical demand and staffing needs such
as project management companies or other service firms that operate in the
communications industry. This allows them the flexibility to leverage the spatial ASP
without committing capital resources to maintaining internal infrastructure and
operations and still satisfy their respective clients’ needs. The drawback to this pricing
option is that there is no predictability in monthly costs due to the cyclical and temporal
nature of the individual user’s consumption of the service.
The case of the Telecommunications Industry
The fundamental technology for delivering GIS and mapping solutions through the ASP
on a thin-client, mobile computing environment exists and continues to improve both in
quality and availability. However, the very best in technology and applications is of little
value unless there is “something” to deliver, that is, spatial data. Without content to
populate databases or with which to conduct analysis, the spatial ASP holds little value.
This point is not lost on the growing number of data product vendors in the market.
These information providers play an important role with both the end-consumer and the
spatial ASP vendors.
In the communications industry, leveraging spatial data products in an ASP solution is a
smart strategy. It avoids costly redundancy in base map data and problems with
portions of data that are “out of control,” resulting in late decisions or inaccurate project
reporting. Providing consistent spatial data through a spatial ASP to all departments in
an organization not only maximizes productivity but also reduces the cost per unit for
information. Spatial data content can be customized and delivered to specific user-groups
within the organization, yet managed and controlled centrally through the ASP.
Thus, for example, the directory, marketing and engineering departments can share
information, and the cost of updates, reducing expenditures and ensuring compatibility
of information across applications.
Regardless of the transmission medium they are using, telecommunications technicians
spend a considerable amount of time away from their offices performing a variety of
activities. Much of their time is spent traveling to and from the central office for maps
and supplies for repairs (“windshield time”). This is a costly and inefficient method of
operation. By developing fieldwork procedures that support the delivery of relevant
geographic information to the user in the field, on-demand in real-time, several benefits
are realized. A typical field engineer could save as much as 260 hours per year in
transportation costs alone with a mobile spatial ASP solution, by reducing the number of
trips from remote work sites to field offices and equipment yards.
Similarly, by providing real-time, focused spatial ASP solutions to technicians in the
field, routing times for emergency repairs and service calls can be significantly reduced.
The technician will also have the most current, accurate information necessary to
complete the service call on-site, without the need for return trips or involvement of non-field
personnel. This not only increases customer satisfaction but also decreases the
cost of each service call considerably.
Several applications have been developed for both the Palm and Windows Pocket PC
operating systems for PDA implementation. These applications continue to be refined
and with the added functionality of GPS and wireless communications, a multitude of
new solutions in a mobile environment will be developed.
