ALTANTA-Convergence was the word at SuperComm 2000 this year, with computing firms like Sun Microsystems Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. both naming wireless Internet a priority for their business strategies going forward.
The endorsement by these computing industry leaders is yet another indication the wireless Internet is indeed real and will be for some time.
“Wireless is important for Sun,” said Ann Wettersten, vice president of business development and planning for Sun’s Network Service Provider division. “We are a networking company and we believe the next great growth wave for the Internet will be wireless.”
“Call it Chapter II of the Internet,” said Mike Hegeman, wireless program manager of HP North America. “Chapter I was a user going to the Web and looking for information. Chapter II is making the Web work for you, using pervasive devices, such as cell phones.”
Both companies displayed their commitment to this philosophy at the show, unveiling a host of partnerships with wireless industry mainstays in an effort to grab a share of the wireless Internet computing platform market.
Sun introduced its iForce Solution Set for Mobile Wireless Internet at the show, essentially a suite of infrastructure components for data services and applications on wireless networks for anyone wanting to build a wireless portal-be it carrier, application service provider or corporate enterprise.
The underlaying foundation is Sun’s programming technology. On top of that platform sits a portfolio of wireless Internet servers and gateways, wireless portal infrastructure, wireless content publishing, content transformation and transcoding, content delivery, wireless location infrastructure, security, billing and customer-care and consulting services.
Customers adopting the iForce Solution Set may employ all or only some of these components, based on their needs. The common factor among them is Sun’s computing platform.
Sun has collected a range of third-party partners to support the portfolio. They include 724 Solutions Inc., Aether Systems Inc., AirFlash, Art Technology Group, BroadVision, Cambridge Positioning Systems, enCommerce, Entrust Technologies, Everypath Inc., Inktomi Corp., iPlanet E-Commerce Solutions, Nokia Corp., Peramon, Phone.com Inc., Portal Software Siebel Systems, SignalSoft, Spyglass and Vignette.
These solutions will be included into the iForce Ready Center, which was created for Sun customers to test their wireless ideas to ensure they best fit their business needs, the company said.
“Our strategy is to enable the wireless community to work. We think about carriers, equipment providers, content providers, device makers and system integrators,” Wettersten said. “We enable all of them and try not to compete with any of them.”
Sun also introduced support for wireless service providers to its Sun.com consulting services group.
“Our ability to not compete is focused on infrastructure and enabling next-generation services. We’re not a content provider. We’re not an ASP,” said Nasser Iravani, group manager for mobile wireless of Sun’s Market Development division.
HP news
Hewlett-Packard introduced a program in November also designed to promote its computing platform by layering an end-to-end wireless services portfolio atop it, called the Mobile E-services Bazaar program. The company had several members of the Bazaar program at hand at its booth at SuperComm to promote the service to the wireless industry.
The platform is a bundle of hardware, software and services combining Wireless Application Protocol servers from Nokia Corp. with HP technologies and a range of third-party partner solutions for such needs as security, billing, revenue sharing management software and smart Internet usage software Like the Sun solution, customers may choose which aspects of the portfolio they need and ignore the rest. All partners have built their solutions on HP’s computing platform. Some 150 portal providers, consulting groups, location-based services, wireless phone and infrastructure technology partners are involved. They include Aspiro, BroadVision, Infosystems, Motorola Inc., SuperWeb, Tantau, WapIT and Yomi Media.
SmartServ Online Inc. also adopted the solution. SmartServ formed an agreement with HP to build a global wireless services platform for financial markets and e-commerce. The companies said they hope to create an always-on global services platform to deliver new Internet and wireless e-services based on SmartServ’s advanced wireless applications and hosting services for financial institutions, backed by HP’s e-services infrastructure and support.
The service would include stock trading and trade order routing from any Internet or wireless devices directly to all major stock exchanges worldwide, the companies said.
The WAP factor
Both HP and Sun have firmly backed WAP as the Internet standard around which they hope to build these and future services.
Sun feels WAP and Java will co-exist in the wireless environment. Some WAP critics have pointed to Java as a possible alternative to WAP.
Java can be difficult to write, and Sun knows this, so the company believes Java will be used for the high-end services the other programming languages cannot handle. Most Internet sites are written in Hypertext Markup Language, but employ Sun’s Java for certain advanced functions. The company expects the same to occur with sites written in WAP or Extensible Markup Language.
“Just like on the Web we saw a balance of both, we expect the same thing with wireless browsers,” said David Douglas, chief technology officer of Sun’s Network Service Providers division. “Sun is making a huge investment to bring XML and WAP converged. There’s clearly a need for a markup language and you need protocols to deliver it. Just because WAP didn’t jump over the highest barrier imaginable doesn’t mean we should throw it away. Let’s build on what was done.”
