Contextual Retail Engagement and Operations Enabled through MQTT, IBM Bluemix, and IBM MessageSight

1. © 2015 IBM Corporation
#ibminterconnect #IAB1959
Contextual Retail Engagement
and Operations Enabled through
MQTT, IBM Bluemix, and IBM
MessageSight
IAB-1959
Bryan Boyd
IBM
@bryanboyd
Rahul Gupta
IBM
@rahulguptaibm

2. 1
what does 'omnichannel' retailing really mean ?

3. 2
it means being able to present a single,
consistent experience to the shoppers, regardless
of whether they are interacting in-store, online,
via a call center, or wherever...

4. 3
Do the digital shoppers sense the omnichannel
experience while shopping online or in a brick and
mortar store ?

5. 4
Will tomorrow’s shoppers be so informed that
the in-store shopping experience will no longer
matter?

6. 5
Will someday the online marketplace replace
the Brick and Mortar store?

7. 2015 IBM Retail Solution Guide
6
http://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?infotype=PM&subtype=RG&htmlfid=REO12345USEN#loaded

8. Digital Impact on In-Store Shopping
7
https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/research-studies/digital-impact-on-in-store-shopping.html

9. 8
Today’s shoppers are more informed than ever
before !!!

10. 9
Shoppers want information throughout the shopping
process, and this drives their use of smartphones
and their consumption of online information for
shopping

11. Shoppers look for information
10

12. 11
Shoppers want information throughout the shopping
process, while shopping online or inside a brick and
mortar store
79%

13. 12
Consumer expectations have gone up; today’s
shoppers prefer stores that offer personalized
experience and services

14. 13
Physical Digital Convergence

15. The Physical-Digital Convergence: The Connected
Employee
14
http://insights-on-business.com/retail/the-physical-digital-convergence-the-connected-employee/

16. 15
Contextual
Services

17. Context Service in a Online Retail Store
16

18. 17
Location Location Location

19. 18
How could brick and mortar retailers harvest
customer indoor and outdoor location for an
omnichannel experience

20. 19
Beacons and nearable technologies for indoor
location services

21. 20
Geofencing for outdoor location services

22. What is a Beacon
21
 Beacon is a tiny computer that broadcasts radio signals which your smartphone
can receive and interpret
 Beacons use the Bluetooth Low Energy protocol
 Beacon advertise packets of data at regular intervals
Beacon advertises :
Proximity UUID – 128 bit (16 byte string)
Major Value – 16 bit Unsigned Integer
Minor Value – 16 bit Unsigned Integer

23. Beacon data format
22
Company ID
(2 bytes always
0X004C)
Type
(1 byte always
0X02)
Data Length
(1 byte always
0X15)
Proximity UUID
(16 byte string)
Major
(2 bytes, uint 16_t)
Minor
(2 bytes, uint 16_t)
Measured Power
(1 byte, int 8_t)
https://developer.apple.com/ibeacon/Getting-Started-with-iBeacon.pdf

24. Beacon data could be edited
23

25. Beacons placed inside the Brick and Mortar Store
24
Beacons can help in capturing deep insight into customer in-store
location and behavior
Enables retailers to integrate the physical and digital experience to facilitate
an ongoing dialogue, create loyalty and deliver an exceptional in-store
shopping experience

26. How to use Becaon UUID, Major and Minor data
25
Store Location New York Chicago Austin
Proximity UUID
B9407F30-F5F8-466E-AFF9-25556B57FE6D
Major 51601 51602 51603
Minor Garden 26134 26134 26134
Electronics 21378 21378 21378
Grocery 21444 21444 21444

27. Geofencing
26
Geofence – A virtual geographic
boundary (i.e. polygon) defined by a
series of latitudes and longitude
coordinates.
Geofencing – Triggering an
action based on mobile use’s
location in relation to
Geofence
Events – Events could be
created on the exit or entry of
the geofenced area
Polygon - A geofence can be specified in one of two ways:
 A regular polygon with a center point, radius, and number of sides.
 A custom polygon, which specifies the set of points that outline it.
Exit Event
Created

28. An Open Approach to Connectivity for Mobile and IoT
27
MQTT is a lightweight publish/subscribe protocol with reliable bi-
directional message delivery
Lossy or
Constrained
Network
Monitoring &
Analytics
Server
Real-World Aware Business Processing
High volumes of data/events
IT Systems
In this arena, open source and standards are essential
1999 Invented by Dr. Andy Stanford-Clark (IBM),
Arlen Nipper (now Cirrus Link Solutions)
2011 - Eclipse PAHO MQTT
open source project
2004 MQTT.org open community
October 2014 – MQTT
3.1.1 released
Cimetrics, Cisco, Eclipse, dc-Square,
Eurotech, IBM, INETCO Landis &
Gyr, LSI, Kaazing, M2Mi, Red Hat,
Solace, Telit Comms, Software AG,
TIBCO, WSO2
Evolution of an open technology

29. MQTT Protocol Deep Dive - Headers
 MQTT protocol control packets:
• Fixed header (2 bytes)
• Variable header (optional, length varies)
• Message payload (optional, length encoded, up to 256MB)
 Fixed header indicates the packet type, the length of the
payload and Quality of Service
 Variable header contents depend on packet type
• Packet ID, Topic name, client identifier and so on.
Fixed Variable Payload

30. MQTT Topics
 All subscriptions are to a topic space
 All messages are published to an individual
topic
 Topic names are hierarchical
• Levels separated by “/”
• Single-level wildcards “+” can appear
anywhere in the topic string
• Multi-level wildcards “#” must appear at the
end of the string
• Wildcards must be next to a separator
• Can't use wildcards when publishing
 MQTT topic names are UTF-8 strings and
could be 65535 bytes
helpmenow
login
customer associate
helpmenow/#
helpmenow/login/+
Helpmenow/login/customer
MQTT: A Protocol for the
Internet of Things - 5039A
Wednesday, February 25,
2015
05:30 PM - 06:30 PM
Mandalay Bay, South Pacific
Ballroom H

31. 30
 Purpose-built messaging appliance
 The gateway to the Internet of Things for the enterprise
 Fast, lightweight, secure, reliable messaging for Mobile
IBM MessageSight
Connecting the Enterprise to the Internet of Things and Mobile

32. 31
IBM MessageSight V1.2
 Extends IBM Messaging family with secure, easy to
deploy appliance-based messaging gateway
 Optimized for massive scale Internet of Things and
Mobile use cases at edge of enterprise
 Exploits hardware acceleration for high performance
 Can extend existing messaging infrastructure or be
used standalone
Designed
for
Things
• Optimized gateway for
Things and Mobile devices
• Efficient open protocol
• Event-driven awareness
• Open and industry agnostic
• Fine-grained security
policies
Developer
Friendly
• Active dev community
• Free dev virtual appliance
• Simple yet powerful APIs
• Simple messaging
paradigm
• 40+ MQTT client libraries
Easy to
Deploy
• Up and running < 30 minutes
• Task oriented UI guides
administrator through first
steps
• Simple and scalable
management through policies
Easy to
Integrate
• JMS
• WebSockets
• MQ
• Integration Bus
• Worklight
• InfoSphere Streams…
Internet
Scale
• 13M non-persistent msg/sec
• 400K persistent msg/sec
• 1M concurrent connections
• Predictable microsecond
latency under load
• Highly available

33. Node.JS
32

34. Demo Actors
33
Actor Name Role
Rahul Gupta
• Customer looking for help inside the store
• Customer arriving to store for order pickup
• Uses the HelpMeNow application
Bryan Boyd
• Store associate expert in electronics and
store pickup
• Uses the Customer Service application
Graig Oteri
• Store associate expert in garden and
grocery section
• Uses the customer service application

35. Demo: HelpMeNow (overview)
34
HelpMeNow
Customer application
Customer Service
Store associate
application
Backend applications
 Node.js application hosted
on Bluemix
 SQLDB used for database
MQTT
MQTT
MQTT
IBM MessageSight
MQTT communication
between all the
applications
Beacons
Advertising data to help
determine location inside
the store
• Customer Login
• Location Identification
• Customer Help Request
• Associate Login
• Associate expertise subscription
• Customer Help Notification

36. Demo: HelpMeNow
35
HelpMeNow
Customer application
Customer Service
Store associate
application

37. Demo: HelpMeNow
36
HelpMeNow
Customer application
 Customer is in
grocery section of
the retail store.
 Customers
location is
determined by the
IOS application,
by the data
transmitted by the
nearby beacon
Customer Service
Store associate
application
 Store associate
has subscribed to
provide help
based on his area
of expertise
 If customer
requests for help,
the store
associate must be
notified

38. Demo: HelpMeNow
37
HelpMeNow
Customer application
Customer Service
Store associate
application
 Customer is in
grocery section of
the retail store.
 Customers
location is
determined by the
IOS application,
by the data
transmitted by the
nearby beacon
 Store associate
has subscribed to
provide help
based on his area
of expertise
 If customer
requests for help,
the store
associate would
be notified

39. Demo: Customer Pickup (overview)
38
IBM MessageSight
MQTT communication
between applications
MQTT
MQTT
MQTT
• Subscribes for customer pickup
notification
• Receives notification when a
customer has indicated they
are arriving for pickup and
enters the geofence
• Customer location coordinates
are published on MQTT
payload
• Events generated
once the customer
has entered the
geofence for store
pickup

40. Bluemix Geospatial Analytics
39

41. Demo: Customer Pickup (configuration)
40
 Store admin defines geofence around store with
management application, submits geofence to
Bluemix Geospatial service
Customer Service
 Store associate application
 Subscribed in the area of
expertise

42. Demo: Customer Pickup (action)
41
 Customer opts in to sharing GPS data during trip to
the store, and enters the geofence surrounding the
store
 Store associate is notified the customer is nearby
Customer Service
 Store associate application
 Store associate notified on
customer arrival

43. Demo
42
 Part 1: HelpMeNow
 Part 2: Customer Pickup

44. Notices and Disclaimers
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