As it stands today, developers of wireless applications have to write those applications in a unique code-whether that be cHTML, VoXML, WML or XML-to make those applications recognizable to the wireless device. But if we look into the future, some unknown years ahead, we may see a world that will not require separate, or “markup,” code for wireless apps.
Along those lines, there will come a time when a wireless application server will no longer be needed either. The industry push to create a single standard and a single server that can support both wireless and desktop apps is barreling ahead.
“If wireless and wireline must co-exist, and I believe they must, then the infrastructure for such applications is either a .NET or a J2EE application server,” said Keith Bigelow, senior director of product management for Lutris Technologies Inc., Santa Cruz, Calif.
“Certainly firms like Lutris and BEA offer wireless support for applications built on J2EE, and there are companies that will build extensions on top of these standards-compliant APIs (application program interfaces) to facilitate wireless development. Fundamentally, however, these frameworks don’t replace the app server, but rather simplify messaging, browsing, interacting, or what have you on top of the app server,” Bigelow said.
An Internet application server runs the software between the browser and the data, and provides the infrastructure for presentation, transaction, security and administration services. IBM Corp.’s WebSphere Enterprise Edition, BEA’s WebLogic and iPlanet’s application server dominate the market, and each is absorbing and adding wireless capabilities to their equipment to support applications like short message service, location technologies and, for now, multiple markup languages.
And while it is true that there is a fundamental need today to have software and different languages, particularly WAP gateways, that can run, translate and host wireless applications, Bigelow said it is inevitable the software, and possibly the companies that offer it, will disappear in analog-like fashion.
“As wireless standards commoditize, which is happening this year as xHTML replaces both WML and i-mode’s cHTML, soon wireless devices will have the exact same markup language as PC browsers, and like PCs, the new phones are moving to actual IP stacks, which further accelerate the commoditization of platforms,” Bigelow said.
“People are going to want to create new apps on wireless, or they’re going to want to include functionality into their existing enterprise system,” said Frank Addante, chief executive officer of Zondigo, which offers software that enables developers to build and run wireless and voice applications using any programming language.
The tragic end of wireless application servers is not as imminent as it might seem, however. Bigelow gave the collective market two to three years to differentiate itself before becoming component suppliers, but there are many factors that are standing in the way of the creation of an all-inclusive server that makes everyone happy.
Industry expert Andrew Seybold said he thought a consolidation of wireless and wireline infrastructure was at least a year out. “I am not sure that there will be a true consolidation,” Seybold said. “I don’t see a battle between the two, they are different and yet alike, but most good developers who want to make money will build for both.”
If this proves to be true, the life span of the wireless application server essentially is in the hands of those developers that write wireless applications in languages other than xHTML.
Addante also noted that Qualcomm Inc. is ready and willing to fight xHTML as the proprietary application development language. The company recently launched its Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless platform, which allows developers to create applications that run on all handsets with Qualcomm CDMA chipsets. Given the healthy hold Qualcomm has on the CDMA chipset market, the “one language for all” dream might further stall. xHTML also does not support voice applications.
Victor Brion, chief technology architect at AnyWhereYouGo.com, told RCR Wireless News in November that the industry “will never solve the problem of the fact that you’ll have all these different devices with different browsers that read” various applications differently.
Still, that is the goal, and there is little doubt in the industry that a day will come when wireless and wireline application servers are a similar, if not the same, thing.
