ObjectSpace Inc. announced the alpha version of its Enhanced Services Platform for advanced messaging services, developed with PageMart Wireless Inc., is complete, and beta tests will begin later this year.
PageMart could have its ReFLEX 25 network, which will incorporate the ESP, in commercial service by the end of the year.
The ESP will allow PageMart’s future two-way messaging users to interconnect with a variety of information sources, including the Internet, corporate intranets, specialized databases, news services and other information feeds, said PageMart.
ObjectSpace and PageMart, both based in Dallas, initiated the partnership to create a platform that supports advanced, custom features and that allows PageMart to make changes in a short time frame. PageMart’s Wayne Stargardt, vice president of PCS business development, said the carrier quickly can add functionality, over the air, for its ReFLEX individual customers and user groups using the ESP.
For instance, if a customer wants to connect to the paging network via the Internet, PageMart could add an Internet-encrypted protocol to the platform.
“We don’t have the ability to do that with commercial paging terminals,” noted Stargardt.
The intellectual property rights for ESP belong to PageMart and the company has no immediate plans to distribute the platform to other paging and two-way messaging carriers.
ESP is a distributed, object-based system, running on a cluster of high-end Intel-based processors. The platform supports frame-relay technology as well as two-way paging, said ObjectSpace. ESP provides the communications, telephony and database services needed to support an advanced paging system. Interaction between the subsystems is provided by DNS Smalltalk. The software is written in Smalltalk and Sun Microsystems’ Java, said ObjectSpace. Customer account information is kept in the object database, Objectivity.
PageMart said ESP is functional with any of the announced two-way messaging products. In January, the company said it would complete its network and start service in Dallas as soon as it had received production quantities of controllers from Motorola Inc.
