w3c position paper - infosys

Need and Relevance of Mobile Based Information Services in Emerging Markets - India

Gnanapriya C ([email protected]) , Principal Architect, Communications Service Provider Business Unit

Puneet Gupta ([email protected]) , Research Area Leader, Convergence Lab, SETLabs

Copyright Infosys Technologies Ltd, 2006

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India ICT – A SNAP SHOT

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LandRecords

RoadTransport Police

LandRegn

TreasuriesComrlTaxes

Agriculture

Gram Pts

Munici palities

EmploymentExchanges

CivilSupplies

Education

IncomeTax

PassportVisa

MCA21

Insurance Banking

NationalID

CentralExcise

Pensions

GIS e-Posts

Common ServiceCentres

Gatewaye-Procure

e-Office

eBiz

EDIe-Courts

IndiaPortal

CorePolicies

ICT Projects in India

Name of the Project

Purpose Future planes

Akshaya Making a district E-literate, limited employment generation.

Delivery of multiple service at Akshaya centers and expand it to other districts

Bhoomi Issue of Land title at 177 Bhoomi kiosks and through privately owned kiosks

Expand rural kiosk network

Drishtee Creating a network of privately owned kiosks for e access to info, government and service commercial

Expand Network to cover new kiosk

E-choupal The prime target is farmer. Farmers get information about seeds’ price, etc

Scale to more users

N-Logue Multipurpose Internet kiosks based on WILL

Expand for commercial utilization

Gyandoot Connecting rural cyber café catering the everyday needs of the masses.

Extend for global Internet

Source: Dipankaj G Medhi, Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand

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Earlier Recommendations …

Source: Domestic IT - Broad Based Economic Development , HCL at 7th round table conference of Panchayathi Raj

“GDP can grow only if we concentrate on integrating agriculture, food processing, education, healthcare, information and communication technology into governance." - Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam, President of India

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Better reach out with Mobile Technologies

• Internet usage is more in urban areas where literacy is more, supported by better local connectivity infrastructures. But for a wider reach, especially to rural India, there is a demand for other technologies that are more accessible and at suitable price points.

• With monthly subscriptions inching towards six million additions per month - 5.9 million of them - are new mobile subscriptions, making India’s net addition the highest in the world, overtaking that of China – though the penetration levels may be lower. India today offers the lowest telecom tariffs as compared to rest of the world with local mobile call rates at less than 2 US cents a minute.

• The number of cellular subscribers in the country is expected to treble to 300 million in the next three to five years

• Every cell phone can technically be used as a data access device. Wireless Technologies that are used for information services are GSM data bearers, GPRS packet data access, CDMA, WiFi

Mobile penetration has been successful from this perspective and has not only been used for networking & communication, but has gained a significant place in doing business and to stay in touch with latest information.

The combination of the above two facts makes mobile based information access an extremely practical and attractive value proposition for a country like India.

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Mobile Value Proposition

In India, the primary drivers for mobility are accessibility and less dependence on the fundamental last mile infrastructure. And given the near ubiquity of coverage, mobile access has become/is becoming powerful access medium for internet access as well

Mobile technologies comes with their inherent advantages not available with traditional Internet access,

– Location Identification– Higher levels/relevance of presence awareness – Context awareness– Anywhere, Anytime access

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… for enterprise

• A new channel to reach out to customers and employees alike• Another self service channel: As end users start getting used to

experience a wide range of mobile voice and data services using mobilizes, an implicit demand to be able to reach out to your business is emerging- Self service via mobile channel can be a killer App

• Employee enablement. Providing the right data, applications and mobile tools to your field service can substantially enhance productivity and effectiveness, factors that have direct impact on day to operations and real customer service

• Expanding to far-out and less accessible rural areas where having a physical presence may not make sense. Very cost effective in virtually extending your enterprises to wherever your customers are, also acquisition of new clients

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Mobile technologies for data services in various segments in India

Sl. No.

Industry segment

Segment details Access / Information requirement

Applicability for Mobile Internet

1 Government executive, legislative and general government, justice, public

order and safety, public finance, taxation, monetary policy, administration of HR, environmental

quality, housing, economic programs, national security and international affairs, and all other

Central, international and local government.

Enable mobility to e-Governance (National e-Governance plan)

Update status, alerts, notification via SMS based on which users can get into the e-Governance portal for more details

2 Agriculture Harvesting, Marketing, pest control, crop rotation

Online advice, transactions, information retrieval

Alerts, Advice, transactions can be handled by SMS based applications or via thin client mobile browser based interfaces

3 Health Care Hospitals, clinics, doctors, nursing, dentists, medical and dental laboratories,

And other health services.

Data sharing, Expert advice, registration for public health service, appointment, alerts, notification

SMS based applications for information/alerts and transactions based on

WiFi / GPRS connectivity at home and hospitals for real time heavy data uploads / downloads

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Sl. No.

Industry segment



4 Financial Services

Banking, securities, insurance (other than health) and health

Insurance (the payer).

Mobile Banking, Financial transactions, Micro finance, Micro Insurance

Information retrieval (account, loan inquiry, status check), Banking transactions, payments, requests (DD, Cheque book etc)

SMS / WAP based applications. Thin client mobile browser based interfaces. J2ME based thick client apps for providing online/offline information access

5 Retail Trade, Trading

General retailers, specialty retailers, grocery, restaurants and hotels.

Interactive communication / Financial transactions / M-commerce

Online store can leverage the mobile channel to deliver instant information to users, assisting them to make informed buying decisions, while helping the retailers to understand and evaluate consumers' preferences.

Auctions is another attractive application area

SMS / WAP based applications. Thin client mobile browser based interfaces. J2ME based thick client apps for providing online/offline information access

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Sl. No.

Industry segment



6 Utilities Electric, gas, oil, nuclear power and sanitary services

Real time Meter reading updates

Bill paymentsReal time info sharing

SMS based applicationsWiFi / GPRS for heavy data

uploads

7 Communications

Wire line, Wireless, Cable, Television, Radio broadcasting

Mobile Content DeliveryNews, Alerts, Content

(Music, Video clips), Gaming

SMS based applications, Streaming with GPRS / 3G / 4G network services (XoIP, IPTV etc)

8 Manufacturing

automotive, industrial, electrical and commercial equipment,

medical equipment and supplies, computer and high-technology, electronics, transportation

Equipment and all other discrete manufacturing.

Mobile Field Force , real time updates, low cost supply chain management – info access

SMS based applications as well thick client based models for storing information for offline access. Real time data updates with WiFi and GPRS networks.

9 Transportation

water, rail and air transportation, urban passenger transit, motor freight

Transit, pipelines, warehousing, couriers, and transportation support services.

Fleet Management (real time updates), M Ticketing, Schedule updates

SMS based applications for updates, m ticketing, schedule updates, status check

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Sl. No.

Industry segment



10 Services IT service providers, software publishers, professional, scientific and technical services, real estate, and business and consumer services.

Real time data access, mobile Content delivery, m-trading, m-bookings

SMS based applications, Streaming with GPRS / 3G / 4G network services (XoIP, IPTV etc)

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The mobile Technology Landscape- Appreciating the options

Mobile UserDevice

Internet

cHTML

xHTML

HTML

XML

SMS

SMTP

HTTP

HTTP/S

WML

Enterprise

App Server

CRM

Database

SQL Server

Oracle

DB2

ODBC

Win CE

Symbian

Palm OS

Pocket IE

Nokia

Synchronization

Security

Messaging Services

Device Management

Identity Management

Middleware

Access mechanism

GPRS

GSM RFiD

PDA

Smart Phone

Tablet PC

Laptop

Mobile Phones

Blackberry SOAP

WAP

TCP/IP

Nokia-WAP

Erricsson

Open Wave

SQL CE

Thin Client

Thick Client

Smart Client

Native App Development

Smart ClientDevelopment

Using MobileApp Framework

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Challenges with state of art technologies

Fundamental value proposition of mobile access to information and mobile transactions is clear, key associated challenges are

– Managing Device Diversity– Context sensitivity– Planning for but “not assuming” any-where, any-time connectivity– Right approach to Security– Minimizing the cost and complexity involved with mobilizing apps– Immature standards in content rendering technologies– Aligning to the right set of technologies for the business needs

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Infosys approach to address these challenges ….

Infosys has been looking into these challenges and our effort have been aligned towards

• development of technology platforms

• solutions that aim to bring the best value from application of mobile technologies in specific areas

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Infosys mobility solutions with a strong Indian context

• Insurance for Rural India

• Microfinance

• Application of mobile real time data for dairy professionals

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Insurance for Rural India

• Challenge – Ability to serve the client base in small towns and in rural areas where it is not

practical to extend the company’s presence by setting up physical infrastructures. – Many of these places are not well served even from an internet connectivity

perspective. • Trend

– Even the remotest of these areas are today being served by mobile networks. • Solution

– We have been working on creating technology platforms that enable creation of solutions that leverage a low cost mobile device that a local, employed by the company as its representative, can use to provide several services which were hitherto possible only when a customer were to visit the nearest office in one of the towns.

– The field representative can use her/his mobile phone to access services like getting customer information, receiving alerts related to due dates for renewals and updation of premium payments received, just to give a few examples.

– Using a low cost mobile device, the field agent can provide all critical services even in areas where setting up of basic internet infrastructure can be a challenge.

– Advanced synchronization techniques supporting both SMS and wireless data technologies offered by GPRS as well as CDMA networks, ensure that the cost per transaction can be kept extremely low.

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microFinance

A credit company providing “micro”loans where the loan amounts are very small. The cost of transaction per loan sanctioned or payment made should be low.

With the microFinance application, data is available with the finance company’s agent to monitor his clients’ loans and their payments.

Transactions are offline and data is synchronized with backend server at a later time or when connectivity is available.

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Application of mobile real time data for dairy professionals

• Using TruSync, Infosys mobile synchronization platform, is aimed at enabling field force of a dairy organization to enable use of mobile device like PDAs to provide nutrition, animal diet and wellness services as well as vaccination services to farmers who have no other effective mechanism to scientifically deal with animal care to increase net yields.

• The solution strength lays in the ability of underlying technology platform to deal with the complexities of the wireless connectivity infrastructure.

• The technology enables the application to work in offline situations when connectivity is not available or when the cost of connectivity is high.

• The technology involves opportunistic pre-fetching of data and by masking the disconnectedness from the end application by fetching the data from the local database, masking the actual state of connectedness from the end application.

• The solution is also aimed at demonstrating the feasibility of such mobile solutions both from technology and cost perspectives.

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Infosys mobility platforms

• Infosys m-Connect platform

• True Sync

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Infosys m-Connect platform

• m-Connect is Infosys context aware mobile transactions platform that enables extension of any web based application to be made available for access from any web enabled mobile device in manner that is optimized for each device.

• The platform takes into account factors such as Screen real estate, Input, Cost of Connectivity, Heterogeneity, Application Deployment, and Available Bandwidth

• The platform is a web server side middleware that detects device type and in real time renders a transaction interface suited for a mobile device.

• One of the critical aspects of the platform is the way existing back end infrastructure is leverages meaning that an existing application can be mobile enabled in incredibly short time frames.

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True Sync

• TruSync is an Infosys platform for building mobile synchronization based mobile solutions.

• By harnessing the power of “Context” TruSync ensures that optimized mobility is realized and the solution understands and appropriately reacts to evolving environment conditions without end-user disruption

• Essentially Trusysnc offers one time architectural foundation doing away with the need of dependency on the individual mobile applications to deal with issues such as network connectivity aberrations, security and transaction prioritization.

• Key Architectural foundations: – Masking the occasional disconnectedness from the application and

hence the end user– Ability to differentiate between application contexts – Removing dependence on both the network level security as well as the

end application security architecture– Also manages transaction prioritization

Thanks!!!

http://www.infosys.com