In the last MSE blog, Reddy Babu talked about the new Location Aware Guest Captive Portal powered by the Mobility Services Engine (MSE). The MSE was first introduced to provide location based information as a core service to the network, but has since built out a suite of location-based services that take the location-based data from the wireless network to the next level. These services are collectively known as the Cisco Connected Mobile Experiences (CMX) solution. As you read in Dr. Brendan O'Brien's blog last week, we have been introducing more and more features to the CMX solution.

Today I will expand on one of these new features offered by the Connected Mobile Experiences solution: Browser Engage -which is our new network based location and context aware orchestration platform.

Browser Engage allows organizations to customize the web browsing experience for mobile users in their venue by offering various context-aware value added services. These services, such as indoor navigation and search, are available to the mobile user throughout their mobile web browsing experience. Browser Engage also helps organizations setup their content and serve them to the users based on device location. For example, an organization can deliver coupons or deals to mobile users based on their location within the venue-making the offerings much more relevant to the mobile end user.  Imagine yourself in a mall and a deal shows up on your phone right around lunchtime that is valid at a food court right around the corner.

So, how does it work?

MSE already has the core concept of location computation streamlined. With this wealth of information combined with a framework and a pre-installed setup of the floor map, stores/zones on the map, it is easy to determine a device's location and attach certain services pertaining to that zone. But to provide these services, the user has to initiate the engagement by going to a certain webpage looking for these services. That usually does not work very well, so we have come up with a built-in proxy server into MSE or a UCS-E based ISR platforms that intercept all traffic and inserts a tiny JavaScript that is usually a couple of lines of code. This script then loads on every page and executes to call its home and retrieve the relevant services. Pretty neat, huh?

Browser Engage comes with a simple user interface, called CMX Dashboard. Sales or marketing representatives from organizations can login to this dashboard to setup the content for pushing out to mobile end users in the premises. Organizations have the option to serve up -two types of content: services and banners. The organization also has the ability to create "Campaigns" that contain the parameters for the execution plan for which banners and services to display based on time, date, location and many more parameters. You don't want to see a coupon for a glass of wine at 10:00am, right? That's exactly the kind of flexibility that is built-in to Browser Engage.

Figure 1 : Browser Engage Administration Interface -Banner CreationFigure 2 : Browser Engage Administration Interface -Campaign ManagementFigure 3 : Browser Engage Administration Interface -Zone CreationFigure 4 : Browser Engage in action

Figure 4 shows a screenshot of how www.cnn.com looks with the Browser Engage enabled. Notice how the banners that were setup in the Admin interface show up on the page. Also included are the Map and Search services. The entire user experience is highly customizable, including but not limited to Logo, Services Bar settings, Banner sizes, location of the services on the page etc. The experience is mobile-optimized so loading mobile version of the same webpage will give the user the same level of experience and access to the same services.

Figure 5 : Indoor Floor Navigation in Browser Engage

Before I conclude this post, I would like to talk about another important feature offered as part of Browser Engage. With "Indoor Floor Navigation", you will never get lost in a big conference center or a mall. It is very simple to use -Just launch it from any webpage, search for a keyword, find a store and navigate to the store all in one place. Figure 5 shows a screenshot of the Indoor Navigation on a Floor map supported on Browser Engage.

With the introduction of Browser Engage, we hope to extend the services offered by MSE and thereby keep the customer make the best use of the product.

For more information on MSE, check out our product page and stay tuned for the next MSE blog.