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E-blana to launch location-based service
Tuesday, October 24 2000
by Aoidin Scully


E-business solutions company E-blana is to launch the first of a series of
location-based services for the Irish marketplace in December, ElectricNews.Net
has learned.

Further launches are due in March and June 2001 and will encompass location-based
billing, location-based emergency services, dispatch services and information
services, according to Tommy Drummond, E-blana's Sales and Marketing Director.



Location-based billing will allow mobile operators to offer different price
ranges depending on location, e.g. 10 percent cheaper calls than those from land
lines when the user is at home, while information services will include
positioning systems, maps, and 'buddy lists'. 



"We will be releasing an application infrastructure on which people can roll
out real business applications in a wireless environment," Drummond told
ElectricNews.Net. "Location-based services is the vision direction where we're
going, that's what we're investing in." 



Drummond added that the company will continue to serve its large blue-chip client
base in Ireland which is based on intranet and extranets for banking and
government, as that is still its core business. 



The E-blana enterprise group was launched only last month and united a number of
companies, including Exselan Computer Systems, The Facility Management Workshop,
and Gemini.



"The mix of companies means we have a lot of the core competencies to pull
together," said Drummond. "Although we don't envisage a lot of the
location-based stuff happening until the infrastructure is in place in six to
nine months' time. There's massive change within the device level and the
operating system level at the moment." 



The industry isn't at a mature stage of settlement yet and relationships are
being formed and broken all the time, he said. Nevertheless, E-blana is in
partnership talks with telco operators and vendors, including Eircell, BT,
Ericsson and Nokia, to discover where they're going and what their timelines are,
Drummond claimed. 



An E-blana team have been developing location-based services over the last two
months, but the company will hire a further four or five people for their main
development centre in Dundalk in January. 



"The market is at a very interesting stage at this point in time, although at
the moment it looks clustered," Drummond concluded. "A lot of clarity will
come into this market in the next few months."