IBM infoSage: Personalized Electronic Information Service

Instant information delivered automatically to your desktop

By Sara Record

Imagine what it would be like if you had an electronic research assistant constantly combing hundreds of magazines and newspapers, looking for the information that you need. The minute a news story broke about one of your competitors, you would know about it. You could keep up with trends in your industry or simply be aware of what's happening in the world during the day. While high-priced computer services like this have been used by information specialists for many years, IBM is now making this type of service available to the rest of us -- at a cost we can afford.

The new IBM infoSage service filters thousands of information sources to pinpoint and deliver the news and information that business professionals need to stay competitive. IBM infoSage provides up to 30 stories twice a day on topics ranging from news and business information to entertainment and sports.

Better Information = Better Decisions

According to Tom McClain, IBM general manager of electronic content services, "We felt that we had the technology to solve many of the problems holding back the widespread use of electronic information services. The key to our approach is to focus on the needs of the individual." McClain lists three key benefits of IBM infoSage compared to conventional online services:

Ease of use: Existing services have been too complex for most of us to use, many times requiring advanced training to find information effectively. IBM infoSage is simple to learn and use. For the first time, individualized searching and delivery is extremely easy with industry-leading topic profiling technologies. IBM infoSage currently has more than 2,300 information topics and categories from which to choose.

Low, predictable costs: Many business-to-business information services charge by the minute for use, so the clock is always ticking. You never know how much the information is going to cost--it depends on how much time you spend finding it. Rates are high, sometimes over $60 (U.S.) an hour. Plus, many services have unpredictable charges for incremental use, so you can get surprised by the bill at the end of the month.

The price of IBM infoSage is $24.95 (U.S.) per month. McClain compares the pricing structure of IBM infoSage to that of cable television: "You can sign up for a basic service and know exactly what your costs will be. You can also order additional services at a fixed price in much the same way as you would order a pay-per-view channel. Either way, you have the flexibility to choose exactly what you need--all at a very reasonable cost."

Accessibility: As a result of the difficulty of use and high cost, many of the premier information sources were previously available only through a library, where trained searchers located information and acted as the only distribution channel. IBM infoSage, on the other hand, is delivered in a way that fits with how you do business. IBM began by designing a secure open system that uses the Internet to deliver this information, so it appears at your desktop in much the same way that internal information does today.

The integration of IBM infoSage with the World Wide Web provides an opportunity to create some very useful new services. Joe Damassa, IBM vice president and managing director of IBM infoSage describes an intriguing feature of IBM infoSage: "Suppose you are reading a story and it mentions a company. We will have a name-finder technology that automatically creates a link to related publications (free and fee-based) that have information on that company. Simply clicking on the link can expand the user's scope of research and produce even more meaningful results."

Integration with Your Intranet

If you use internal Web servers to provide employees with company information (often called an intranet), IBM will soon be able to integrate infoSage so that both internal and external information are presented in a consolidated manner. Damassa states, "Access to outside information is just a small part of the overall mission of most data processing organizations. But if external information is well integrated, it can result in much better decisions. For example, sales reps can learn what products their competition offers and compare those to products available from their own company. IBM's broad scope of expertise and products can facilitate this kind of integration. Beyond the information service we are describing here, the IBM Global Network can also provide Internet access; ISSC can consult on design and implementation issues; IBM software divisions can help with database and delivery tools; and the various IBM hardware divisions can supply the equipment, such as laptop computers, that enable access."

Industry-Specific Solutions

Damassa continues, "This new service is part of a strategy to provide an increasing number of industry-specific solutions to IBM customers. IBM is focused on 13 large industry segments that rely heavily on IT (including telecommunications, media, health care, retail, manufacturing, and so on). You can expect to see future applications that are tailored to those industries, with IBM infoSage integrated along with them."

According to Damassa, "This type of service is very valuable. For example, we surveyed the pharmaceutical industry and discovered that they were spending $200 to $300 (U.S.) per sales representative per month for information and another $100 to package the information for delivery. IBM can provide this type of service to a company at a much lower cost."

IBM infoSage Content Providers

IBM infoSage users have access to information from over 2,200 sources. Here is a glimpse at some of the sources:

Additional Content and Functions Are on the Way

Currently, IBM infoSage is a U.S.-only offering, but IBM plans to expand it to additional geographies. Although IBM infoSage is available on the Internet and therefore accessible to people around the world, profiles and content are initially customized for the U.S. market. In addition, help desks are not yet available outside the U.S. and Canada.

McClain's team has big plans. "We expect to add content and functions in the future while maintaining or even reducing prices. We see great potential to integrate the customer's internal company information into the public information provided by IBM infoSage. That will really help companies make more informed decisions--the ultimate goal of our work. I think we'll also see people reclaiming time by using automation to find and condense the information they need."


FOR MORE INFORMATION


Sara Record is a networking writer with The TDA Group, Los Altos, CA. Internet: sara@tdagroup.com

Reprinted from IBM's Quarterly Networking Magazine, Issue 2, 1996.


IBM infoSage Delivers Custom News Clippings

Under current law, Web stores would cut into local revenues

By Robert Hertzberg

Staking its claim to one of the fastest-growing parts of the Internet market, IBM has launched a new subscription service designed to bring customized information and data to business people.

The new service, IBM infoSage, will be available via e-mail, Web, and Lotus Notes for a single-user price of $24.95 per month. That base fee will get subscribers up to 60 stories a day about interests the user has identified.

The product is designed to compete against a number of other personalized information services that have become popular in recent years, including the NewsPage service from Individual Inc. and Dow Jones & Co.'s News Retrieval.

To get infoSage started, IBM has cemented deals with seven or eight "content aggregators"--companies such as Comtex Newswires and Reuters--which in turn distribute content from numerous sources.

Joseph Damassa, managing director of IBM infoSage, said the initial content on the service would make it competitive with other customizable news services. "What we're going to do now is further differentiate ourselves," he said.

InfoSage is one of several new content-oriented initiatives that IBM is pushing in the Internet space. A second effort, IBM infoMarket, includes an Internet search service that is seeking revenues through Web advertisements.

Damassa said one primary difference between infoSage and infoMarket is that the information in infoSage all comes from known sources, whereas the information on infoMarket does not. Indeed, infoMarket suffers from much the same "garbage in, garbage out" limitation that affects every other Internet search service, Damassa said.

At the infoSage service, in contrast, "We control the relevancy of what you get--we control the sources," Damassa said. While IBM is not ruling out selling advertisements to support infoSage in the future, ads will not be part of infoSage's initial revenue model.

Damassa said the area that IBM is targeting--the business information market, excluding some already well-served areas, such as law and brokerage firms--could be a $2 billion-a-year market by the year 2000. If that happens, it will probably be a very profitable business for companies that can cut deals with the right providers, generate demand for their services, and keep customers happy.

Not surprisingly, IBM's ambitions for infoSage go beyond strict news dissemination. IBM's Internet planners hope infoSage can also become the front end for a suite of tightly integrated back-end applications, whereby news developments might trigger searches of a customer's proprietary database. But the IBM executives who have brought infoSage to market acknowledge that such capabilities are part of an "infoSage 2" that hasn't yet emerged from the proof-of-concept stage.


Reprinted from Web Week, Volume 2, Issue 3, March 1996 © Mecklermedia Corp.


IBM shuts down InfoSage

By Reuters
Special to CNET News.com
December 12, 1996, 10:15 a.m.

IBM is shutting down its Net-based InfoSage personalized news service because it competes with IBM's own customers.

"Our customers didn't like the idea that InfoSage pushed their brands into the background," IBM chairman Louis Gerstner said in a keynote speech at the Internet World trade show in New York, adding that IBM does not wish to compete with its customers.

IBM's InfoSage service was an Internet-based service which gathered stories at the request of a subscriber and sent the subscriber personalized news tailored to the customer's request.

The news is delivered either to a customer's electronic mail address or to a company or individual Web site. But some stories were snippets and did not always identify the source of the news, so the brand on the news was lost.

Some of the content providers on the InfoSage service included Reuters, Information Access Company, and Standard and Poor's.

InfoSage stopped accepting subscriptions November 27.


Story Copyright © 1996 Reuters Limited.