Middleware Issues for Mobile Business and Commerce - CiteSeerX

Middleware Issues for Mobile Business and Commerce K.A.Hawick and H.A.James Computer Science Division, School of Informatics University of Wales, Bangor, North Wales, LL57 1UT, UK Tel: +44 1248 38 2717, Fax: +44 1248 36 1429 Mobile commerce is an exciting and very recent addition to modern business enterprise. Mcommerce allows levels of sales and management interaction at unprecedented new turn-around times. The technologies for M-commerce are still in their infancy. While new hardware devices such as mobile telephones and personal digital assistants are now commonplace, the software for enabling such devices to support reliable timely secure mobile commerce activities requires considerable development. We are experimenting with sociotechnological aspects of both M-commerce and Mbusiness with a number of industrial partners. As well as investigating B2B and B2C scenarios, we also introduce the term “I2I” for internal to internal business data exchange transactions. Our particular research interest is in developing a middleware to support M-activities. We describe our experiments in this area and our prototype system. Keywords: m-commerce; middleware; distributed systems.

1

Introduction

Great advances have been made in the hardware and software support infrastructures for e-activities in recent years. E-commerce involving buying and selling activities; e-business encapsulating broader business transaction and management a activities; and most recently mobile commerce activities have benefited from new technologies. Mobile commerce or M-Commerce can be defined as those activities that can now be carried out by business people on the move - away from fixed computer and telephone networks. M-Business activities owe a lot to the ubiquity of mobile phones and the relatively recent protocols

and infrastructure to support them. We have seen the widespread support and take up of lightweight bridging technologies such as WAP [10] and their use in simple mobile sales systems. There is great promise for hardware that will support GPRS and next generation wireless and mobile systems for greater bandwidth and lower latency for mobile transactions. Memory and processing power for mobile devices such as personal digital assistants has developed rapidly very recently so that this is now feasible to run a full conventional operating system such as Linux with multiple threads and processes. This sort of capability opens up possibilities for running what were once desktop applications on mobile devices. It is already feasible to use web, email and instant messaging systems with mobile devices as clients. We are investigating the potential to run even more powerful applications on mobile devices - including server side technologies. Our particular research interest is in providing smart middleware that can run in a concurrent environment on a user’s PDA or phone and can provide additional support to his/her applications. It is not altogether clear what the market wants from mobile devices and we have found it important to consider the sociological issues as well as purely technical ones. We are working with several companies interested in mobile computing [2,8] and m-business activities. This is helping us prototype a peer-peer based middleware infrastructure and associated set of experiments. In this paper we describe some of the case studies we have considered (Section 2) and the general middleware related issues we have abstracted from our experiences (Section 3). We then outline how our middleware prototype addresses common issues and (Section 4)finally discuss the areas for develop-

ment that we think require most work (Section 5).

Mobile sales E−Sales agents "Conventional Sales" b2b b2c

mobile support infrastructure Sales Portal

on Mobile network

within fixed network MIS

Figure 1: Mobile commerce support structure where the sales support function has been broken up into conventional support but also supplies a portal for b2b and b2c operations. Figure 1 shows a general approach to the mactivities support function of a corporate management information system. At the time of writing, wireless technologies such as WaveLAN exist to support mobile computing devices within a building with bandwidth capabilities that are comparable to fixed networks to the desktop. Add on packs for devices such as the Compaq iPAQ [1] make this feasible today. Technologies such as GMS [7] allows dial up connectivity and emerging technologies such as GPRS [9] support always connected links to base stations and fixed networks. Many applications from desktops will be directly portable to PDAs and other mobile devices based on the provision of Internet Protocol (IP) built on top of GSM and GPRS and related systems. It is not clear if this provision is enough for mobile users where additional issues, related to the connectivity reliability and device capabilities, arise. We therefore believe it is important to experiment early with the emerging mobile support technology to investigate new business models and activities.

2

Case Studies

In this section we discuss some case studies and scenarios for m-business activities.

We introduced wireless local area networking technologies into our laboratory in 2000. The IEEE 802.11b wireless LAN technology provides a usable network comparable with 10MBit/sec shared ethernet media. This is generally entirely adequate for typical mobile users moving around a work environment and using email and web based applications. Client software for laptops and PDAs can utilise the Internet Protocol (IP) stacks provided by the common operating systems (eg Windows or Unix based) that are available for such platforms. We introduced this wireless technology into two business environments. At one level we set up a wireless infrastructure to support companies at our local technology transfer and incubation centre. Around 18 small to medium sized enterprises use this building and are able to access the local area network around the building - including from their own business units and from shared resource areas such as conference and catering areas. Secondly we have worked with a network supply company to testbed a campus wide wireless system across the whole business park. This latter system uses novel networking technology and provides similar bandwidth to the local area network although it too is a shared medium and would thus saturate if too many users tried to communicate to many packets at once. Generally corporate experience has been very favourable and some advantages include: • ability for project managers to stay connected by email throughout the site - instant messaging technology has also become popular recently • ability to instantly access web sites and services provided by corporate intranets - such as portal access to financial and management information. • a degree of reduction in the use of paper and notebooks - it is now common to see managers and engineers working together over networked laptops and PDA and typing notes directly into networked devices and sharing the results. This sort of technology is clearly promoting the B2B sort of environment that is appropriate for the business park and the incubation centre. We also introduce the term “I2I” to denote the internal to internal transaction or exchange that seems attractive to companies. Internal colleagues comparing

project notes or sales figures are potentially conducting transactions or interactions that are just as important ultimately to the business as sales transactions. A common comment was the value of an instant response or confirmation of a particular data exchange or other transaction. There is clearly still a lack of confidence in the wireless system’s to guarantee a transaction took place. Another experiment involves a medical supplies company who have introduced wireless technology in support of a) their stock and inventory control staff in a warehouse environment and b) their sales force in the field. The former use a similar wireless system to that described above with positive comments about the ability to enter and verify stock data from arbitrary locations in the warehouses. The sales force must of necessity use dial up technologies. Original support was for dial up services available on laptops. Various web based portals and associated services were set up to allow the sales force direct access to the corporate management information system. This in fact allows them to interact indirectly with the stock and inventory control staff and has allows the company to adopt a more just in time approach to production and warehousing. More recently WAP enabled mobile phones were introduced to the sales force to allow them to carry out simple transactions without lugging around a laptop. In general this technology is not as useful to the sales people who find the mobile phone too limited an interface to use quickly in the field. Surprisingly records show that many do use the system but punch in the data in the evening from home rather than at the time of sale. It seems most likely that it is human factors related to the small phone screen and limited keyboard that is making it too stressful to use this interface in the field. A different experiment involved introducing mobile phone technology to the sales force or a veterinary supplies company. Similar results arose to those with the medical supplies company. In general sales representatives calling at farms and veterinary firms do use the technology but report that the interface is still too cumbersome for them to use it at every point of sale. Another common comment was that the dial up reliability is not high and that it was embarrassing to “not get through” in front of a customer. It seems likely that the introduction of “always connected” technologies such as GPRS

will alleviate this problem. In the case of the companies experiences described, both firms were already experimenting with e-commerce technologies and systems. We had previously helped both set up web based points-ofsales (B2C systems) and helped to integrate them with the corporate management information systems [6]. Adding the mobile layer was therefore not a huge hurdle technologically. It has therefore been possible to arrange technological solutions that are secure and technologically sound to allow mobile access to corporate data. We believe the small screen and limited keyboard of the mobile phone are the main barriers to successful uptake. We are now experimenting with the larger colour screens supported by personal digital assistants such as the Compaq iPAQ and to an extent by the Palm family of devices. Initial response from sales and stock forces is positive and these devices are much closer to the power (in terms of storage and processing) of a laptop although they still have smaller screens. Business solutions based on these PDAs are now being reported for many mobile organisations including some Police forces in the UK. We introduced a number of PDA devices to academic colleagues and business and project managers in the University environment. Generally the response has been to use the devices as mobile caches of important information and to use them to manage contact databases; appointments and diaries; and to maintain some project case notes. Users seem to trust the synchronisation capabilities of modern devices. They will dock their devices and that mode of data exchange is more common than use of wireless. This is almost certainly because of the limited wireless coverage we have available at present. Access to email and web surfing has been uptaken by some users who work in wireless covered work environments. Our most sophisticated users have lamented the ability to work off-line in small ad hoc networks. We are working on middleware components that will support this mode of operation [4], which appeals particularly to groups of field scientist who would work in groups out of range of base stations. We have investigated possible mechanisms for mobile B2C systems and are discussing these with companies in the games industry. It seems likely that the success of this approach is limited to niche markets and will depend on the targeted individ-

uals having access to and being comfortable with WAP and related follow on systems. At present PDAs are still too expensive compared with mobile phone handsets which are now almost ubiquitous. In view of these mostly positive experiences, it seems timely to consider what software can be developed to provide the sorts of mobile services that will assist in rapid prototyping and development of mobile business applications. In particular it is interesting to consider how smart systems software can anticipate the need to connect or manage shared data and can insulate users from network connectivity vagaries.

3

Common Issues

In summary, the common issues for m-commerce that we note are concerns about: • Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and associated factors for the mobile devices: size of screen and legibility; size/weight, shirt-pocket sized; human input devices available, speech desirable; device resistance to dropping, rain and other environmental issues. • Mobile Device Integrity: trust in the device if it gets lost, smashed or otherwise damaged; battery life and associated data protection; data persistence, eg use of flash memory or associated cards. • Mobile device Upgradeability: in terms of memory and processor speed; also upgrades of the operating system (OS) and not just the hardware, upgrade of applications to be compatible with desktop versions. • Interoperability amongst Devices: with memory packs; with other systems; synching with other newer computers;file exchange messaging for new emerging formats or protocols. • Uncertainty about new mobile business functionality: users anticipation of new modes of interaction; new means of entering data; new ways of linking applications together to utilise contextual data. • Transactional Integrity: of business transactions or data exchanges.

The final area of common user interest is in “smart systems” support including customisable responses and events when entering or leaving particular spatial zones. This functionality is an area that is capturing user’s imaginations although there is some work to be done before it is more than a laboratory demonstration. Although distributed computing security issues have attracted a lot of recent media attention we found that this was no more a concern for mobile users than for any distributed or networked computing business user. An extra concern was raised however about data privacy and business integrity if a device were lost or stolen. In general we conclude that there is no one best hardware configuration that suits all users yet. Nevertheless we think it likely that a formfactor similar to the Compaq iPAQ, but with builtin wireless and telephone capability, will be preferred by many users particularly if handwriting and speech recognition software capabilities mature further. Essentially a device that is light enough to fit in a shirt pocket and that is robust enough to tolerate dropping and light rain, will be adopted more readily than some of the heavier more fragile devices on the market today. Power consumption and the associated battery or fuel cell ergonomics issues are beyond the scope of what we consider here. Improvements in that technology will presumably propagate to support all mobile devices allowing longer periods of mobile activities.

4

A Middleware Solution

Middleware can address many of the issues of concern or interest in mobile business systems. Figure 2 illustrates the general problem of mobile computing that we are trying to address with middleware. The business user is represented by his mobile device as a proxy and may be connected for part or even most of his/her work period. There are times when the connection will be unavailable either through congestion problems or general unreliability problems or simply if the user is operating outside a network covered region or building space. Figure 3 shows the basic relationship between a mobile device and the fixed network of servers. Present mobile devices are capable of running server-side technologies and our middleware solution is based on a lightweight peer-peer server dae-

Interaction with Other User(s)

Location Information COMPAQ

Fixed User Preferences

Preferences Response Logic (policy)

Interaction with (Fixed) Environment (eg base station)

Direct User Interaction (voice/keyboard/buttons)

Figure 2: A PDA Mobile User Device in Context. Mobile Device Client and Server?

Fixed Network Server(s) Via Portal?

Cached/Hoarded Data

Access to MIS

Active agent Support

Data Synch

Pre−fetching

Master Copies

Push/Pull Data

Other MIS functions

Figure 3: A functional architecture for supporting mobile users and devices in a corporate MIS environment. The mobile device will certainly run client software but may also act as a small server too. mon that runs on the PDA. Our system is built using Java technologies although we have considered MS Visual Basic/Visual C++ technologies for the graphical interface of the local client. We describe our daemon architecture from a technology perspective elsewhere [5]. In this paper we discuss support capabilities for the mobile business and commerce issues identified in section 3 Human Computer Interaction and device form factors issues are not areas we can directly address although we can ensure that appropriate software graphical interfaces fully take account of the small screens and input devices of mobile computer systems. If larger devices such as laptops are employed then general issues of intuitive and well considered screens and forms also apply. We expect the whole mobile devices industry will move this technology

ahead and address many of the device hardware issues. It is possible for us to address data integrity issues through safe and secure data exchange protocols and we anticipate that biometric devices such as fingerprint recognition built into future devices will alleviate users concerns over device theft or loss. Data encryption applications are also already commonly available for mobile devices. Data integrity is already quite well addressed using persistent storage technologies such as flash memory for critical data. We are also investigating active synchronisation and aggressive data caching and hoarding techniques in our middleware. These approaches ensure that the device maintains copies of data on the fixed network and that loss or damage to the device has minimal impact on business data. Interoperability is a key area where middleware can future-proof devices and the business models and user access patterns that accompany them. Middleware can provide file exchange and database exchange support that is independent of particular applications and of particular operating system versions. Upgradeability concerns also addressed in this way. Our middleware uses Java software technology and is likely to be easily maintained and upgraded with new operating systems versions. We believe that new functionality in terms of speech and text recognition will be an integral part of new devices. This is typically incorporated through an interacting middleware. Past lukewarm uptake of these technologies is due in part to their being too proprietary and too hard for application developers to integrate with their work. We anticipate better standard application programming interfaces in these areas. We are addressing the need for new smart systems and incorporation of artificial intelligence capabilities into our middleware. We describe our architecture in more detail elsewhere [5]. Our key idea is to support a message oriented middleware that allows smart components to send messages to applications or to invoke applications when certain events occur. Events might include the mobile user transitioning from one spatial zone to another or might be in response to stock prices changing outside certain user set parameters. The key obstacle to setting up such a smart system is not lack of software to manage the infrastructure but is in defining an unambiguous language of preferences that allows the user to specify the desired customisation.

5

Discussion and Conclusions

We believe there is great potential for mobile devices a and their use in business environments and as tools for trading and commerce. However, apart from the expected continuing developments in the device technologies and wireless infrastructures we believe a great deal of work is needed to enable application interoperation and provision of other services to mobile users through their mobile device proxies. Services such as: secure data transmission and exchange management; data backup and cache management; access to multiple databases and management information systems; and finally incorporation of contextual data, will all bee needed to enable the m-business phenomena. Managing the complexity and expressing what we want of mobile business systems is one of the biggest hurdles to overcome. A key area for future work is determining a language or interface for users to customise and manage the behaviours they wish their mobile devices to exhibit. Another important area is the development of message and event oriented middleware for managing interoperation amongst mobile business users. Finally we look forwards to lighter and more accurate embedded global positioning systems as part of mobile devices. We conclude in general that the availability of hardware to support mobile business activities and the porting of existing desktop and fixed network solutions can only take us so far towards a ubiquitous m-business environment. Many of the other perceived shortfalls can be addressed by new mobile systems middleware.

Acknowledgements The Distributed and High Performance Computing Group is a collaborative venture between the University of Wales, Bangor and the University of Adelaide in South Australia. Thanks to W.Owen and T.Kirkham for discussion on some of the MCommerce issues reported here.

References [1] Compaq, iPAQ Pocket PC. Available from http://athome.compaq.com/showroom/-

static/iPAQ/handheld jumppage.asp visited August 2002.

Last

[2] G.H. Forman and J. Zahorjan, “The Challenges of Mobile Computing”, in D. Milojicic, F. Douglis and R. Wheeler (eds), Mobility Processes, Computers and Agents, ACM Press ISBN 0-201-37928-7, 1999, pp. 270–285. [3] K.A. Hawick, H.A. James, A.J. Silis, D.A. Grove, K.E. Kerry, J.A. Mathew, P. D. Coddington, C.J. Patten, J.F. Hercus, and F.A. Vaughan, “DISCWorld: An Environment for Service-Based Metacomputing,” Future Generation Computing Systems (FGCS), 15:623–635, 1999. [4] K.A. Hawick and H.A. James, “Personal Communications and Mobile Decisions Support”, Submitted to IEEE Int. Conf. on Communications (ICC 2003), August 2002. [5] K.A. Hawick and H.A. James, “Middleware for Context Sensitive Mobile Applications”, Submitted to Workshop on Wearable, Invisible, Context-Aware, Ambient, Pervasive, and Ubiquitous Computing (WICAPUC) - Australian Computer Science Week (ACSC 2003). [6] K.A. Hawick and H.A. James, “Integrating EActivities with Wide Area Management Information Systems”, Submitted to 2002 WSEAS Int. Conf. on E-Activities. [7] Japanese Meteorological Satellite “The GMS User’s Guide”, 1989.

Center,

[8] D. Milojicic, F. Douglis and R. Wheeler (eds), “Mobility Processes, Computers and Agents”, ACM Press ISBN 0-201-37928-7, 1999. [9] Mobile GPRS, “General Packet Radio Service”, Available from http://www.mobilegprs.com Last visited September 2002. [10] I. Roche, “An Investigation and Design of a WAP Service”, Honours Thesis, University of Wales, Bangor (supervised by K.A. Hawick and H.A. James), 2002.