 | December 1, 2000 |
Moving targets
OUTLOOK: Software targets end-to-end mobile services
Mobile phones and other handheld devices have become an arena for Internet content, applications, and services tailored to play in this small footprint. The challenge, however, is how to make them platform independent. In other words, how do you outfit consumers with access to the same personalized information on different handheld devices and the desktop as well? A number of companies are addressing the issue by offering software- and hardware-independent middleware, backed by server software that can transcend different client types.
Espial Group, for example, has announced its "Pervasive Internet Ecosystem," billed as an end-to-end technology, service, and management platform for smart devices. The offering starts with core productivity applications such as calendar, browser, and email delivered to developers as part of Espial Devicetop. The Espial vision, however, centers on connected clients. And indeed, Devicetop allows users to automatically register and subscribe to network-based services. Espial's DeviceServer service-management system allows service providers to deliver and manage content and application services to a wide variety of smart devices, including smart phones and smart cars. Espial products can be used with many popular device operating systems and with Java virtual machines, thereby making applications malleable and scalable for different devices.
Hewlett-Packard, meanwhile, aims to enable cross-platform access via its Chai Appliance platform. The embedded software platform extends services from enterprise systems to a full a range of intelligent devices, including mobile phones, automobiles, and handhelds. Key components of the Chai Appliance platform include the ChaiVM, a scalable environment for running Java applications, and the ChaiFreezeDry technology, which provides a small memory footprint for the handheld environment. Other components include the ChaiServer embedded Web-based application server and the ChaiFarer XML (extended markup language) microbrowser.
Recent announcements from Sun Microsystems and IBM also indicate that there's a future in serving up Internet applications and services to mobile devices. Sun recently unveiled a new carrier-grade server platform and software for wireless calendar and messaging applications. IBM, for its part, introduced software for wireless devices and a new wireless application hosting service.
—Margot Suydam
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