Wednesday, July 02, 2008
NXTcomm08: Converged Apps Rule At The Sandbox; Location & Presence Tie Together Content…
The dust has settled and clear trends have emerged from the NXTcomm08 show that recently wrapped up in Las Vegas. Forget the business school dogma and the assumption that companies must pick a “make or buy” strategy. In telecoms we are faced with a choice between make or mash – and the latter is gaining traction as operators, service providers and enterprises wake up to the advantages of mashup applications that combine Web 2.0 type services with traditional telecommunications offerings.
This is the feedback we got at the Microsoft Connected Services Sandbox, where Artilium also showcased several converged applications. Put simply, the Connected Services Sandbox is a development environment that facilitates the rapid creation and deployment of new services that effectively join the cool apps we associate with Web 2.0 with everything else. The program walks the talk, encouraging mashups by bringing together independent software vendors, developers, systems integrators network equipment providers and telecommunications service providers to create and test new communications services.
It’s all about combining the best of the Web with the best of telecoms – and not reinventing the wheel in the process. As Steve Zimba, Managing Director of the Global Telecom Business at Microsoft, put it in a statement: “We see third-party application development powering a new wave of innovation, which in turn provides operators with a plethora of new revenue-generating services.”
This wave has impact. A prime example is the line-up of demos Artilium unveiled at the Sandbox, all featuring our patented Mobile Presence functionality. They included:
• A child monitoring service that allows parents to check the location of their children and their status (if they are on phone, in a lesson, etc…); and make a one-click phone call from the computer desktop to their child within a particular location (school, home, a friend’s house).
• Real-time call control from the desktop allowing users to see an incoming call – regardless of whether it arrives on the mobile, landline or IP phone – via a pop-up display on the computer screen complete with contact details including a photo designated in Microsoft Office Outlook contacts. True to the name this app provides users with options to “control” the call. They can send it to voicemail, forward the call to another number, or choose from a number of other actions.
• A desktop-integrated location-based weather service that delivers dynamic 12-hour weather forecasts in synch with the user’s current location to the device of their choice.
By way of background, the applications showcased in the Microsoft booth were all built using Artilium’s ARTA Mobile Services Platform, an open and modular Next Generation Service Delivery Platform and Intelligent Network designed to enable the rapid creation of new mobile applications. It achieves this by providing open and secure mobile network access to third-party developers, thus creating intelligent mash-ups that combine network capabilities of presence, mobility, location and telephony with Web services including advertising, social networking and search. Artilium’s patented Tri-cell Intelligent Location System rounds out the offer, providing automatic continuous location data for mass market phones without the need for GPS or other specialist equipment.
The idea is not to make a new desktop experience, but to extend it and make it fully mobile (yet device agnostic). The outcome is continuous real-time location and state data that open an infinite variety of possibilities for a new breed of mobile mashups that combine what Artilium calls the Three C’s – Content, Commerce and Community. These are more than service components; they are the must-have ingredients of innovative mashups that were a main attraction at NXTcomm08. The opportunity is at the intersection of these three C’s. That’s where make or buy becomes irrelevant because only mashups can we join the best of the Web with traditional telecoms services, and pave the way for mobile operators to deliver a new generation of services that securely exploit the convergence of location, presence and everything else in between.