Short Messaging Service (SMS) for Enterprise Messaging

SMS for Enterprise Messaging - Value added services

Short message service, usually called SMS, is a globally accepted wireless service for enterprise messaging (mobile value added services) that enables the transmission of alphanumeric messages between mobile subscribers and external systems such as electronic mail, paging, and voice-mail systems.

The text comprises letters or numbers or an alphanumeric combination. SMS was created as part of the GSM Phase 1 standard. Each short text message is up to 160 characters is length when Latin alphabets are used and 70 characters in length when non-Latin alphabets such as Arabic and Chinese are used.

SMS comprises two basic point-to-point services:

Mobile-Terminated short message (MT)

Mobile-Originated short message (MO)

SMS Mobile-Terminated (SMS MT)

SMS (MT) are transported from the SMSC to the handset and can be submitted to the SMSC by other mobile subscribers via MO-SM or by other sources such as voice-mail systems, paging networks, or operators

SMS MT Services allow the deployment of various applications such as:

Information Services (loyalty card members, delivery confirmation etc.)

Real-time notifications and alerts (banking, finance and stock alerts, travel, sporting results)

Direct Marketing offerings (promotions, new product announcement, events and shows, m-coupons)

Ring tones, Logo downloads

Quiz, live games

SMS Mobile-Originated (SMS MO)

SMS MO are transported from a MO-capable handset to the SMSC and can be destined to other mobile subscribers or for subscribers on fixed networks such as paging networks or Internet protocol (IP) networks (including the Internet and private e-mail networks).

SMS MO Services are typically used in deploying applications to receive information from Mobile users to an external short messaging entity, which is typically a computer connected to the internet. Such request for information is made by sending an SMS from their mobile phones to a service number linked to the service of the content provider.

Typical SMS MO service examples are dedicated requests, voting or quiz applications. A customer can register his request for information e.g. Text 'Product ABC' to +44 7979458584 to know the product details of the product or to text 'Yes' to a mobile number to confirm presence in an event.

Why do enterprises need SMS based mobile data services?

SMS based mobile data services are not necessary for every enterprise or every division within an enterprise. As with any new communications/ IT application or service, the investment and cost of an implementation must be balanced by a sufficient economic return. Several research firms have stated that two to three years after a mobile data services implementation a company should see a positive return on their investment.

However, there are a few compelling reasons for enterprises to get on to tap the potential of SMS based mobile data services. For many enterprises, such wireless initiatives form ways to advance customer service, productivity, cost reduction, or simply functionality necessary to remain competitive.

A good example is the financial industry where wireless services have played a role in maintaining competitive position in the consumer market. Many leading banks, stock brokers and mutual funds have already started such service in which their customers receive pre-defined 'business-rules' driven alerts or notifications. These notifications or alerts are a result of SMS enabling of business processes. Such a service eliminates the need of conventional getting connected on voice, thereby reducing direct communication cost and indirect costs (time of people making voice calls) and complexity involved in the business process.

Of late, innovative and cost effective and business models for SMS based mobile data services have emerged by which the enterprises are not required to own the wireless communication infrastructure required for the said service. Instead, they get all the benefits by the hugely successful 'pay-as-you-go' model. This reduces total cost of ownership of the new initiative.

There are a few Mobile Value Added Service Providers (MVASP) that have emerged in the past couple of years which provide high quality service as compared to operators, who do not focus in enterprise wireless messaging as the size of the market is sub-optimal from the perspective of operators. Moreover, the expertise required in providing high quality and end-to-end service requires expertise in both IT industry and telecommunications verticals which makes this service offering unique. Many enterprises globally are already benefiting from such SMS based wireless initiative to reduce cost and increase operational efficiency at work.

To deliberate and decide, whether SMS based mobile data services will provide tangible economic benefit to their business, there are a number of questions enterprises should ask can themselves. This type of strategising is a first step in defining the value SMS based mobile data services provide and is necessary to avoid initiatives that provide "neat" capability without sufficient and early return. When evaluating your needs for mobile data services, questions to ask include:

What all business processes, in which if the concerned person gets to know relevant information on the move, he/she will be able to take desired action?

Is a significant percentage of an organisation's work or workforce away from a fixed place of business?

Is my enterprise ready for such a kind of initiative?

Would such an initiative have the potential to reduce my total cost of communications?

Can remote users easily access pertinent information from internal systems?

What are my competitors doing with regard to wireless applications?

Will using SMS based mobile data services improve my customer service?

Mobile data services are aimed to increase operational efficiency and reduce costs. When computing the actual return on a wireless initiative, one must look at cost savings from increased efficiencies, productivity, customer satisfaction, and other such metrics. This is substantially more complex than discounting revenue generation, because many of the metrics are approximates and many of the benefits very subtle, but this estimation gives the most accurate measure of success.

Many companies provides mobile data services like ValueFirst Messaging Pvt. Ltd. www.vfirst.com is a leading enterprise messaging services company in India provides SMS on GSM/CDMA/GPRS also provides SMS sending software / applications services and products.

There are a number of metrics that will assist in determining the return of a wireless initiative. Take careful attention to assure that the metrics used relate directly to the type of solution. For example, when deploying SMSbased mobile data services for maintenance, look at the amount of time spent on a sales call. If billing is incorporated into the system, check the change in the billing cycle, to see that it has decreased. Some other metrics that may help measure the success of a wireless implementation are:

Increased sales per employee

Decreased time per maintenance call

Increased customer service levels

Reduced turnaround time

Reduced communication costs

About The Author

This article has been contributed by (Mr.) Vijay Shukla, Country Head, ValueFirst Messaging India (http://www.vfirst.com). Vijay has over 8 years of industry experience management consulting and mobile data services. He can be contacted at vijayshukla@yahoo.com

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

How ultracapacitors work (and why they fall short)

Hang around the energy storage crowd long enough, and you’ll hear chatter about ultracapacitors. Tesla Motors chief executive Elon Musk has said he believes capacitors will even “supercede” batteries.

What is it that makes ultracapacitors such a promising technology? And if ultracapacitors are so great, why have they lost out to batteries, so far, as the energy storage device of choice for applications like electric cars and the power grid?

Put simply, ultracapacitors are some of the best devices around for delivering a quick surge of power. Because an ultracapacitor stores energy in an electric field, rather than in a chemical reaction, it can survive hundreds of thousands more charge and discharge cycles than a battery can.

A more thorough answer, however, looks at how ultracapacitors compare to capacitors and batteries. From there we’ll walk through some of the inherent strengths and weaknesses of ultracaps, how they can enhance (rather than compete with) batteries, and what the opportunities are to advance ultracapacitor technology.

Capacitor 101

A basic capacitor consists of two metal plates, or conductors (typically aluminum), separated by an insulator, such as air or a film made of plastic, or ceramic. During charging, electrons accumulate on one conductor, and depart from the other. In effect, a negative charge builds on one side while a positive charge builds on the other.

The negatively charged electrons want to join the depleted (positive) side, but can’t cross over that non-conductive insulator (for the most part, anyway—there is some leakage). This separation of positive and negative charges, which want to balance out, or neutralize, each other, creates what’s called an electric field. Discharging occurs when the electrons are given a path to flow to the other side—in other words, when balance is restored.

Putting the “ultra” in ultracapacitors

Ultracap diagram courtesy of NREL

Ultracapacitors also have two metal plates, but they are coated with a sponge-like, porous material known as activated carbon. And they’re immersed in an electrolyte made of positive and negative ions dissolved in a solvent. One carbon-coated plate, or electrode, is positive, and the other is negative. During charging, ions from the electrolyte accumulate on the surface of each carbon-coated plate.

Like capacitors, ultracapacitors store energy in an electric field, which is created between two oppositely charged particles when they are separated. Recall that in an ultracapacitor, we have this electrolyte, in which an equal number of positive and negative ions are uniformly dispersed. And remember that in a capacitor, negative charge builds on one side and positive charge builds on the other. Similarly, in an ultracapacitor, when voltage is applied across the two metal plates (i.e. during charging), a charge still builds on the two electrodes—one positive, one negative. This then causes each electrode to attract ions of the opposite charge.

But for an ultracapacitor, each carbon electrode ends up having two layers of charge coating its surface (thus, ultracaps are also called “double layer capacitors”), John Kassakian, a professor in MIT’s Laboratory for Electromagnetic and Electronic Systems (LEES), explained to me: “In effect, an ultracapacitor is actually two capacitors in series, one at each electrode.”

Joel Schindall, another professor in MIT’s LEES and associate director of the lab, explained that during discharging, the charge on the plates decreases as electrons flow through an external circuit. “The ions are no longer attracted to the plate as strongly,” he said, “so they break off and once again distribute themselves evenly through the electrolyte.”

The ultracap advantage

Unlike capacitors and ultracapacitors, batteries store energy in a chemical reaction. Ions are actually inserted into the atomic structure of an electrode (in an ultracap, the ions simply cling). This is an important distinction, because storing energy without chemical reactions allows ultracapacitors to charge and discharge much faster than batteries, Schindall explained. And because capacitors don’t suffer the wear and tear caused by chemical reactions, they can also last much longer. (See previous post: Why lithium-ion batteries die so young)

Charge separation is at work in both capacitors and ultracapacitors. But in a capacitor, the separated charges can get no closer than the distance between the two metal plates. They’re awfully close together—on the order of tens of microns—but limited by the thickness of that ceramic or paper film in the middle (one micron is one-thousandth of a millimeter). In an ultracapacitor, the distance between the ions and opposite-charged electrode is so tiny it’s measured in nanometers (one-thousandth of a micron).

Why should we care about such small distances? Turns out the size of the electric field is inversely proportional to the separation distance. The shorter distance between those separated charges in an ultracapacitor translates to a larger electric field—and much more energy storage capacity.

That’s only part of why ultracapacitors can store more energy than regular capacitors. The activated carbon is also key. See, it’s “so spongy,” according to Schindall, that it affords a surface area 10,000 to 100,000 times greater than the linear surface area of the naked metal. Put simply, all those nooks and crannies in the surface allow more ions to cling to the electrode.

Measuring capacitance

Surface area makes a huge difference for what’s called capacitance, or the amount of electric charge a device will hold given a certain amount of voltage. Capacitance is the key metric for comparing capacitor performance, and it’s measured in Farads (named, as Lost fans might appreciate, after the chemist and physicist Michael Faraday).

Now, the Farad is such a huge unit of measurement, “it’s like measuring distance in light years,” said Schindall. So it’s much more common to see microfarads (one-millionth of a farad) and even picofarads (one-millionth of a microfarad).

A capacitor the size of a D-cell battery, for example, has a capacitance of only about 20 microfarads. But a similarly sized ultracapacitor has a capacitance of 300 Farads. That means, at the same voltage, the ultracapacitor could in theory store up to 15 million times more energy than the capacitor.

Here is where we run into some of the challenges with ultracapacitors, however. A typical 20-microfarad capacitor would be able to handle as much as 300 volts, while an ultracap would be rated at only 2.7 volts. At a higher voltage, the electrolyte starts to break down. So realistically we’re talking about an ultracapacitor storing about 1,500 times the energy of a comparably sized capacitor, said Schindall.

Ultracaps and batteries as partners

Despite offering a huge leap over regular capacitors, ultracaps still lag behind batteries when it comes to energy storage capacity. Ultracapacitors (which are also more expensive per energy unit than batteries), can store only about 5 percent of the energy of comparable lithium-ion batteries. And that, said Schindall, is a “fatal flaw” for many applications.

It would be technically possible, for example, to use ultracaps instead of lithium-ion batteries in cell phones, with some serious benefits: You would never have to replace the ultracapacitor, said Schindall, and the phone would recharge very quickly. But the phone wouldn’t stay charged for very long at all with today’s ultracapacitors—perhaps as little as 90 minutes, or five hours max, Schindall said.

Ultracapacitors are very effective, however, at accepting or delivering a sudden surge of energy, and that makes them a good partner for lithium-ion batteries, Schindall explained. In an electric car, for example, an ultracapacitor could provide the power needed for acceleration, while a battery provides range and recharges the ultracap between surges.

Think of it this way: The ultracapacitor is like a small bucket with a big spout. Water can flow in or out very fast, but there’s not very much of it. The battery is like a big bucket with a tiny spout. It can hold much more water, but it takes a long time to fill and drain it. The small bucket can provide a brief “power surge” (“lots of water” in this analogy), and then refill gradually from the big bucket, Schindall explained.

Putting ultracaps to work

Already, Schindall believes some electric vehicle manufacturers are using ultracapacitors for acceleration. The devices also appear in hundreds of other applications, from cell phone base stations to alarm clocks (as backup power) to audio systems.

For most music, Schindall explained, a high-end audio system with big speakers might do just fine with a 1-watt amplifier. “But then the kettle drum comes in,” demanding a sudden power surge of 1-kilowatt. One solution, Schindall said, is to build a 1-watt supply, plus an ultracapacitor to handle the peak.

Ultracapacitors hold promise for a similar job on the electric grid. Today, transmission lines operate below full capacity (often somewhere above 90 percent), said Schindall, in order to leave a buffer for power surges. Banks of ultracapacitors could be set up to absorb power surges, enabling transmission lines to run closer to 100 percent capacity.

It might not seem like much, especially considering that it would take warehouse-sized banks for ultracaps to do the job. But installing ultracapacitors to handle the peaks would actually be much cheaper, Schindall said, than adding even 5 percent more capacity with new transmission lines.

In cars, ultracapacitors could play a role in the growing market for “microhybrids,” which cut the engine during idling.  In these “start-stop” systems, Schindall explained in an email, “The ultracapacitor would provide power during the stop (lights, radio, air conditioner, etc.).” It would also provide power for the restart, and then be “recharged during the next interval of travel.”

How to build better ultracapacitors

There are two basic ways to improve the performance of ultracapacitors: increase the surface area of the plate coating, and increase the maximum amount of voltage that the device can handle.

Recall old Faraday again. Capacitance, measured in Farads, is how much electric energy our device will hold given a certain voltage. Increase the voltage, and you can increase the amount of energy our device holds (energy is equal to half the capacitance, multiplied by voltage squared).

Schindall is tackling the surface area challenge using carbon nanotubes (more like a shag carpet or paintbrush than the sponge-like activated carbon). Other researchers, he noted, are working with graphene or better activated carbon. In addition to boosting the surface area, carbon nanotubes and graphene can also “withstand a somewhat higher voltage” than activated carbon, said Schindall.

The voltage challenge, meanwhile “seems to be a tougher road,” he said. Researchers are experimenting with ionic liquid electrolytes (all ion, no solvent, behaves like a liquid), which under the right conditions can operate at up to three times the voltage of conventional electrolytes.

But ionic liquids are “fussy,” Schindall said. “They don’t like being liquids,” and tend to freeze below room temperature. They’re also expensive, and they have higher resistance than conventional electrolytes, which means you can’t get energy out as fast. The maximum power—one of ultracaps’ key advantages—is decreased. As Schindall put it, “There’s always a tradeoff.”

Image courtesy of Argonne National Laboratory, and NREL, stantontcaddy, Maxwell, Ioxus,

Related content from GigaOM Pro (subscription req’d):

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.