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A company called FireScope is using Google Maps to help its customers keep an eye on things, and although things aren’t off to the strongest possible start – FireScope currently has just seven customers – it’s a very interesting idea.

As Computerworld’s Jon Brodkin explained, large companies’ IT managers can use a single map to monitor far-flung branches. “[Y]ou can look at a U.S. map with a marker for each facility and receive instant reporting if there is a problem with the availability, performance or security of one of those systems,” he wrote.

Then, “[a] red flashing light – or whatever other indicator you might choose – would notify you of a problem, and . . . you can click on the location to find more information about what is going wrong and to connect to programs that will resolve the problem.” Even beyond the “cool” factor, it sounds like a useful tool.

Why, then, has FireScope rounded up only seven customers? Well, lack of time seems to be the main reason. FireScope was founded in August, and its appliances have only been on sale since November. In that brief period, however, it’s earned the business of Telscape, “a local phone exchange carrier serving the Hispanic market in California.”

Telscape is no small fry, according to Brodkin. It “has 105 co-location sites containing network management and access gateways . . . . The company also has about 18 stores and kiosks.” They’re presumably all well-documented within Google Maps.

FireScope depends entirely upon Google’s product, of course, which could be either good or bad. Yet the strategy seems to be working so far for the Le Palma, California-based company.

UPDATE: I received a very polite note from the good people of FireScope alerting me to a few "discrepancies."  As written by Ryan Counts, FireScope's Manager of Marketing:

"The first is that the google maps integration is just one feature - recently announced - of our product. We are much more than a Google Maps integrator. I’d invite you to browse our website (www.firescope.com) for more details . . . .  I think you’d be wowed by some of the other features we offer, even more than the google maps. The other discrepancy is the count of only 7 clients. What was not fully articulated in Jon Brodkin’s article was that the 7 clients represented the sales for the first quarter of business (November through December of 2006), and not sales through this date."



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