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Improving the Management of Mobile Software

By John Purcell
Director of Terminals and Platforms
Red Bend Software

There’s a lot of discussion these days about how to improve the management of mobile software. Handset manufacturers are rethinking their architectures, analyzing modularized platforms and examining techniques such as storing programs in a User File System. Their goal is to gain greater access and control over individual software components after the phone has shipped, so that new core applications can be changed, services can be added and features can be customized.

But as we all know, it’s not that easy to create a silo of software inside a mobile phone. As software is developed, there are dependencies and hooks that reach into all layers, including in embedded software residing in ROM.

Take a web browser, for instance. A web browser may require dozens of other software components in order to fully function, such as embedded media players, video streaming components and UI resources. “Containing” the web browser is difficult, because other programs also clearly depend on some of those components.

We can no longer rely on layered but physically distinct frameworks to comprehensively manage the growing amount of software in increasingly sophisticated mobile devices. Manufacturers need management flexibility both for devices that store embedded statically-linked software and devices that employ a more modular and dynamic architecture, including open source platforms.

There are many current and emerging approaches to mobile software management. When evaluating each approach, manufacturers and platform providers should ask:

Can it work across multiple device architectures and platforms?
What existing and emerging standards does it support, to ensure interoperability?
What type of software can it manage, including software embedded in ROM?
Is it scaleable for managing individual software configurations at the mass market level?
Is it reliable, fault-tolerant and secure?
Is it consumer-friendly?

Most importantly, a powerful mobile software management solution should adapt to how software is designed, without imposing restrictions to architecture in order to achieve so-called management.

To learn more, read my article published in Wireless Design & Development called, “Beyond Platformization: Using Mobile Software Management to Achieve Feature Customization of Mobile Phones.”

Labels: design, mobile software management

posted by Red Bend @ Tuesday, September 18, 2007 - 1:11 PM 0 Comments