While there are several instant messaging solutions in the marketplace today, Invertix Corp. is using its IM Anywhere software product in ways that it says go beyond simple messaging.
The company is looking to act as the go-between for the many content providers hoping to reach subscribers nationwide. Essentially, Invertix has taken an instant messaging gateway and transformed it into a content management and customer profile gateway.
“It’s a business-to-business gateway,” said Art Hurtado, Invertix chairman and chief executive officer. “It brings together carriers on one side and dot-com companies on the other. I’m talking about instant messaging and unified messaging players as well as m-commerce players and also aggregator companies covering specific vertical companies and content providers.”
IM Anywhere collects user data from its carrier partners and provides it to the content companies that want to use it. This data includes presence information, location and user behavior.
So a retailer subscribing to the gateway would have access to a wireless subscribers’ location, and send them instant messages if a given subscriber falls within a certain distance of a given store location.
The gateway is permission-based, so subscribers may configure what information they wish to have shared, and with whom, allowing them to block instant messages from retailers in which they are not interested.
“The main point of our gateway is to protect privacy issues,” Hurtado said. “Bottom line is, IM Anywhere provides to the subscriber real control over their m-commerce destiny.”
It also allows carriers to block certain content providers, if they choose.
“The second part of this is the carrier,” he continued. How they manage their data is their prerogative. We don’t intend to violate that. We won’t disrupt the relationship between the customer and the carrier.”
Invertix is offering the gateway to providers free of charge. The company makes revenues off the content providers paying to have access to the gateway.
Invertix is now pursuing deals with dozens of content providers. Thirty have signed on already, Hurtado said, and many others are expected in time for the gateway’s fall launch.
Once it collects a solid base of content providers, Invertix then will offer the gateway free to carriers, stressing that a carrier need only strike one deal with Invertix to have access to more than 30 content providers, rather than strike these deals independently.
“The gateway reduces tremendously their burden to develop scores and scores of relationships with dot-com companies,” Hurtado said.
In addition, Invertix manages all the location and user profile information, freeing the carrier to simply sell the service.
“This is an opportunity to monetize a part of their infrastructure not being optimized today, at zero cost to them,” he continued. “It allows them to participate in a larger community and derive revenues they would not otherwise derive.”
