Microsoft Web Conferencing CompassFor almost a decade now, Microsoft has been providing mapping applications to help travelers navigate the streets. Now, the company’s compass is pointing in a different direction this time. Their thrust is to provide web conferencing service that is primarily targeted to the market for real time, location-based business services. In a bold move, Sprint will be introducing a type of web conferencing service that uses Microsoft’s compass software, MapPoint Web Service and MapPoint Location Server before the year’s end. This web conferencing compass software will let companies track field service representatives, vehicles, or other assets as they move around the United States region. Using the web as a compass is the newest application for the web conferencing concept and businesses can expect to see a growing number of similar offerings from other location-service providers. Tom Bailey, the director of marketing with Microsoft’s MapPoint business unit, says as much, stating a generated profit of about $50 million in fiscal 2004. Microsoft is actually not the first company to combine the collaborative power of web conferencing with the convenience of a location device such as a compass. For some time now, Location services have been available from specialists that use other technologies. But none of these services have the perceived power of Microsoft’s web conferencing compass combo. As Bailey says, Microsoft’s MapPoint will lead to new and cheaper options. The web conferencing compass application is targeted at small and midsize businesses. Microsoft hopes to get them to eagerly adopt their location-based service for everything from tracking cabs and bread delivery trucks to elevator repair personnel. As an online service, MapPoint Web Service is actually the web based version of Microsoft’s geographic compass application. The service was launched about three years ago and is now used by several hundred companies, including FedEx and Hilton Hotels. Introduced in March, Microsoft’s MapPoint Location Server merges the mapping and compass capabilities of MapPoint Web Service with the real time location data made available through web conferencing where there is a wireless network of operators. As its first compass based application, MapPoint is actually the service behind Microsoft’s growing number of consumer-oriented location services. In August, Microsoft introduced another compass application called Streets & Trips 2005 which comes with a Microsoft-branded GPS locator used in combination with a laptop, Pocket PC, or Smartphone. The web conferencing device is listed at $129 and since its release, tens of thousands of the software-and-device packages have sold in the past few months. “We’re seeing the units fly off the shelves,” Bailey says.
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