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LBS Middleware

Xypoint^® Location Services Gateway (XLSG)

The Xypoint^® Location Services Gateway (XLSG) module in the Xypoint® Location Platform (XLP) is robust middleware that serves as the interface between the LBS platform components and the LBS applications using standard communication protocols (MLP). The XLSG provides authentication, authorization, privacy, and revenue assurance related to location applications and transactions. It brokers location transactions between third parties and carriers. Further, it enforces carrier location privacy policies and business rules. The XLSG exposes location capabilities to third party developers via standard APIs and toolkits.

One of the primary concerns since the advent of LBS has been personal privacy and security around user location data. Indeed, privacy controls are critical to ensuring consumer and enterprise adoption of LBS. Middleware addresses these issues by performing a number of critical privacy and security functions:

• Managing subscriber profile information.
• Managing subscriber privacy—access controls allow subscribers to identify who can access their personal location information.
• Managing application authorization, thus providing end-users control of their location information.
• Managing authentication, confirming that the person trying to access subscriber information is who they say they are.
• Integrating billing and operations systems securely.

In addition to privacy and security functions, the Xypoint Location Services Gateway (XLSG) provides operators with LBS revenue and service assurance. Revenue assurance entails tracking and reporting on different location request types in order to manage and effectively bill against location-based services requests. Service assurance abilities allow providers to differentiate between different network location services requests in order to provide different levels of location services based on application and subscriber profiles.

TCS Xypoint® Location Platform (XLP) infrastructure modules are built to meet high availability guidelines:

• Network: All systems are connected to the operator’s network in a fashion that allows for continued availability when network routes unexpectedly go offline.
• System: All systems are distributed across a series of redundant servers in an “all-hot” availability model, allowing for automatically routing requests to other system components when unexpected problems occur.
• Software: All components are redundant by design, allowing for automatic redistributing traffic to online systems.

This allows a single XLP site to be 99.99% available to operators. Additional sites can be installed and networked together to offer geo-redundancy options and increase availability to 99.999%.

TCS provides in-network, hosted, and hybrid LBS deployment. While the in-network option allows greater control, it requires a capital expenditure for requisite hardware and software as well as for the operating costs associated with non-stop operation, upkeep, and monitoring. By opting for TCS to host, operators remove the capital acquisition costs as well as the operational and logistical burdens associated with hardware and software purchase, installation, scalability, maintenance, and around-the-clock operations.