Location, location

MICROSOFT’S PR MACHINERY is in overdrive lately, promoting the company’s vision of Internet-enabled applications. Recent weeks have seen the rollout of Visual Studio .Net, Microsoft’s cross-language development platform, and the .Net Framework for enterprise applications. However, the long-promised (and, by some, long-dreaded) suite of hosted Web services, codenamed Hailstorm and later dubbed .Net My Services, has yet to see daylight beyond specs and press releases.

On April 10, Microsoft announced the availability of its first .Net Web service: MapPoint .Net Basic Services 2.0. MapPoint .Net is a SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)/WSDL (Web Services Description Language) Web service, hosted by Microsoft, that extends location-sensitive mapping capabilities to Internet-connected applications and devices. Debuting as an extension of Microsoft sites and applications as well as a publicly available fee-based Web service, MapPoint .Net promises reliable mapping data that is regularly updated.

Eventually you will be able to tell MapPoint .Net where you are, and it will kick back the latest information including road construction and even traffic conditions. Initially, the service is limited to maps, driving routes, and commercial and public points of interest.

MapPoint .Net is an excellent proving ground for .Net. Tracking all the changes in the world’s roadways is well beyond the means of all but the largest and most dedicated companies. Even Federal Express and UPS might prefer to subscribe to this service than attempt to duplicate such a massively complex undertaking. So the question isn’t whether MapPoint .Net is a useful service, but rather, whether you should trust Microsoft to provide such a critical piece of functionality.

In a nutshell, MapPoint .Net is a collection of Web services functions that delivers to developers the ability to add location specificity and awareness to custom Web applications. A sales force automation app could call into MapPoint .Net to retrieve complete driving directions to customer sites. A point-of-sale application could locate all the stock of a specified item within a given geographic region. A user carrying a GPS-equipped smart phone could get turn-by-turn directions to the nearest Holiday Inn. MapPoint .Net will be used for just such purposes by Microsoft’s own HomeAdvisor and Carpoint online real estate and automotive buying guides.

Microsoft has been involved in mapping applications for a while now. MSN features a consumer-oriented mapping application and in some cars you find a Microsoft-powered driving assistant. Internally, Microsoft tells us, the company used its mapping technology to do everything from demographic analysis to regional product adoption visualization. Using standardized SOAP and WSDL, developers can integrate Microsoft’s mapping technology in their own applications.

All in all, that’s good news. While SOAP has competition as a standard (most notably from XML-RPC), SOAP is an open standard. According to Microsoft, MapPoint .Net beta testers used not only Visual Studio .Net, but Perl and Java, too.

From a value of service point of view, the questions get tougher. Microsoft promises 99.9 percent uptime with credits for missed transactions. Each transaction costs 4 cents to 1 cent depending on the volume purchased. All MapPoint .Net functions, such as render map and route, are charged at the same rate. As part of the subscription, Microsoft will render maps with subscriber logos and icons. Customer profile data, including previously viewed maps and favorite locations, will eventually be stored. MapPoint .Net will provide statistics on usage as well.

Future releases of MapPoint .Net will supply demographic data. Applications that collect customer mailing addresses can use MapPoint .Net to not only verify the address’ validity, but also to retrieve such statistics as the average age and income of residents in the immediate area.

Pricing makes MapPoint .Net too expensive for most advertising-supported Web sites. Microsoft as sole host will give pause to some enterprise and carrier-class customers who would rather rely on their own service infrastructure. It’s also worth noting that aside from Passport, this is Microsoft’s first .Net service offering. The company doesn’t have a track record in services and is relying on channel partners for both sales and support. MapPoint .Net looks like a valuable service and its SOAP support makes it available to a wide range of applications and devices, but potential subscribers may want to take a wait-and-see approach.