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Will Mobile Operators Face a Capacity Crunch Soon?By Richard KinderVP of Technology and New Business for Europe Red Bend Software Mobile data has finally arrived. After years of hype, the volume of data on mobile networks is reported to have surpassed that of voice traffic. Whilst the majority of this traffic is driven by people with mobile broadband subscriptions, undoubtedly the new breed of data-intensive mobile devices contributes significantly to this rapid growth. This bandwidth consumption is stressing the edge of the network and backhaul, resulting in a potential field day for providers of optical and microwave infrastructure. I could successfully argue that the capacity crunch is already upon us. A frequently cited answer to congestion problems is to off-load mobile data from the mobile core network. Various techniques may be deployed to achieve this, such as WiFi or Femtocell offload. For the best results, both approaches rely on mobile devices being aware of their network context and acting accordingly. Unfortunately, the majority of handset software platforms have yet to acquire the necessary smarts to make best use of these whilst staying within the strict energy budgets imposed by today’s battery technologies. We should not forget that bandwidth usage is only one metric by which to measure mobile network capacity. As has been highlighted in numerous articles, blogs and elsewhere during and since Mobile World Congress 2010, today’s mobile devices also impose a greater signalling burden on the mobile network. Whilst I am yet to receive a clear explanation of exactly what signalling traffic is generated, one can hypothesise that the desire to preserve battery life results in these devices frequently establishing and tearing down PDP contexts, which in turn creates signalling traffic within the operator’s infrastructure. So what can the industry do about this? 4G standards such as LTE and WiMAX eventually will allow for future growth in mobile data usage – the key word being future! Prior to the halcyon days and unlimited bandwidth of 4G, network operators are committing significant amounts of money to enhancing their existing 3G infrastructure. As developers of device software, we too have a role to play, for example:
We cannot rely solely on network operators’ investments in infrastructure to address the capacity crunch. We have a responsibility to use what they provide as efficiently as possible. Services and platforms that can help operators manage their capacity concerns just may be more appealing to them. To misquote Scott McNealy (he of “the-network-is-the-computer fame”), one day datatone will be as important as dialtone. That day is here. Labels: 3G, bandwidth, LTE, mobile, mobile broadband, mobile data, mobile networks, mobile operators, mobile software management, mobile world congress, Red Bend Software, software, standards, WiFi, WiMAX
Reflecting on Mobile World Congress 2009Below are some highlights from Red Bend Software members who participated in the four-day Mobile World Congress 2009 event in Barcelona.Lori Sylvia, EVP of Marketing, and Morten Grauballe, EVP of MSM Platforms App stores created a lot of noise at Mobile World Congress. Every OEM and platform provider is getting into the app store game. But the pundits are debating the wrong points. It’s not whether app stores should be closed systems from the OEMs or run by operators for the mass market. It’s not which runtime environment should win, in order help developers reduce costs and gain scale. We’ve learned by now that the mobile industry is not one size fits all, not one business model fits all. I think this highly competitive market over the next three years at least will continue to see all of the above: platform-specific app stores, OEM closed systems, operator branded storefronts and myriad development environments. The real issue is how to let ISVs build and deploy applications that can generate new revenue streams for OEMs as well as operators from the nearly 3 billion mobile phones in use. To truly unlock this potential, ISVs need to break the dependency that applications have to be developed for specific devices. By enabling mobile phone software to be customized on demand over the air throughout the handset lifecycle, developers can innovate and consumers can choose handsets, services and applications. Gang Shen, Director of Sales, China Some operators announced plans to take on mobile widgets to help improve app stores. China Mobile, for example, showed a demo of a widget at Mobile World Congress. I expect this kind of service engine will become more popular and welcomed by both operators and customers. Another interesting highlight at Mobile World Congress is that more small brands than I expected showed some amazing phones, which use the Chinese ODM/DH solution. John Pratt, Director of Sales, Europe Control seems to be the big issue on everyone’s mind at Mobile World Congress. As handset manufactures and operators begin to launch app stores to generate incremental revenue from software sales, everyone wants control over this service and to either directly receive revenue or be compensated for their role in the value chain. The race for even cooler handsets packed with more features and capabilities continued, but the real story is who will win the race to control app stores. It appears that handset manufactures and software vendors have an early lead, with the likes of Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Microsoft and Google all promoting their stores, but the sleepy giant who owns the end customer (i.e., operators) might have the last say. Companies are also in a constant battle for control over what platform developers choose to develop their apps on as all the major app store companies have SDKs and are aggressively trying to attract application developers. Developers are no longer seen as someone in the backroom, but rather someone who can create that one app that generates significant interest and eyeballs that will ultimately help generate revenue and promote brand awareness. Mobile World Congress demonstrated that the industry is once again going through quite a transition, and it will be interesting to see who will win the race for control over attracting developers and delivering app stores to maintain and grow brand loyalty. Labels: device management, DM, firmware, FOTA, Google, OMA-DM, Red Bend, standards
SCOMO Goes Beyond FOTA and Focuses on Managing Individual Software ComponentsBy Elad GanotDirector of Standards and Alliances Red Bend Software Last month I enthusiastically purchased an advanced home entertainment system. I paid a lot of money to enjoy its high sound and picture quality, which were enabled by the cutting-edge technology that’s available in today’s market. It took me about seven years to upgrade my system even though I am a gadget fan and have a technical background. My new system is composed of an HDTV, an advanced receiver (which includes an image enhancer), a media streamer and a DVD player. You might wonder why isn’t Blu-ray part of my system—especially if I want to enjoy high definition movies. The DVD won’t help me so much as it cannot store the capacity required for HD quality. Well, as you may know, there is still doubt on whether Blu-ray will indeed become the next mainstream format for movies, so I’ve decided to wait and see. I can always upgrade separately my existing DVD to a Blu-ray (or whatever other format wins the market). Upgrading my DVD will not force me to upgrade the whole system because it is a stand-alone part with well-defined interfaces to the rest of the system. This makes it a “component.” When the time comes, I will receive an email telling me about this cool new device and for the right price I would click the “buy it now” button, and a delivery package will be on its way to my home. Going from the hardware world to the software world, things look even cooler. Here not only do components are upgradable, but also they even do so almost instantly and quite frequently. I change software components on my computer at least 100 times a year (not just once every few years). I install software, update existing software and uninstall software that I don’t use. Sometimes I just disable software for a while and re-enable it later. Yeah, I like tweaking the software on my computer, and recently I started playing with my mobile phone in the same way. My mobile phone has so many software components available for it that I even abandoned my stand-alone PDA, which had served me loyally for several years. Most users are not even aware of the fact that their mobile phone could actually be used as a personal computing platform. They probably know they can customize it in terms of a fashionable look (with wallpapers, sounds and colorful covers), but will they know how to discover a useful software component? Then be able to download it? Install it? Disable it if needed and re-enable it? Remove it? It was back in 2005 when the mobile industry saw an opportunity to improve the user experience with regard to software management and offered a service of managing the “life cycle” of software components on remote devices. To be able to realize this concept, you have to achieve a mass market, and the industry must agree on some common methods of communication—to allow for every device on every network to connect to the service, regardless of the manufacturer of the equipment (be it a managed client device or a managed server). The good news is that we NOW have a consensus with the Candidate Release of SCOMO 1.0 that was ratified by the OMA on Nov. 17. Now let us componentize the last sentence in a reversed order:
But a Candidate state also means a lot from a business perspective. Interoperability testing period typically happens in parallel to commercial deployments of the enabler. This means that Candidate Release of an enabler is a signal for businesses to start implementing commercial deployments, since the enabler is stable.
Labels: design, device management, DM, firmware, FOTA, mobile, mobile software management, Red Bend, standards
Standards Acceleration Is Sign of Growing Market Adoption for Device ManagementBy Elad GranotDirector of Standards and Alliances Red Bend Software Standards play a critical role in emerging technologies in their path towards technical maturity and in their quest for widespread market adoption. Recently I have been reviewing the OMA Device Management enablers with a focus on how the older deliverables of the OMA-DM Working Group differ from the upcoming deliverables being worked today. When examining the evolution of OMA DM papers and working procedures over the past years, I have noticed several positive signs in the development of device management enablers which show the growing market adoption of over-the-air software update services. A number of signs bring me to this conclusion, and the rest of this post will point out these factors. As a background, let’s look briefly at the DM historical milestones: · April 2002 – SyncML Specifications V1.1 are approved by SyncML Initiative. · November 2002 – The SyncML Initiative is merged into OMA · May 2003 – SyncML specs converted to OMA format, creating SyncML Common 1.1.2, Data Synchronization 1.1.2 (DS) and Device Management 1.1.2 (DM) · December 2003 – SyncML-DM 1.1.2 is approved by OMA · November 2004 – SyncML-DM renamed to OMA-DM · Jun 2005 – OMA-DM 1.2 spec reaches Candidate state · July 2006 – OMA-DS 1.2 release is approved by OMA · February 2007 – OMA-DM 1.2 release is approved by OMA Sign #1 – Established Organizational Processes Speed Time to Market In the beginning, the work was relatively slow, mainly because the establishment of OMA organizational processes was happening in parallel with the standardization of DM and Firmware Update Management Object (FUMO). This fact, along with the work that was needed to adapt the outputs of the SyncML Initiative to the overall ‘look and feel’ of OMA outputs, created a challenge for the DM Working Group that resulted in some unavoidable compromise in terms of work quality and timely delivery of the standard. The good news is that these historical constraints no longer affect the current DM Enablers (also known as Management Objects, or MO’s) being worked today in the OMA-DM Working Group. OMA process issues that were not clear in the early days of the organization have been clarified and significantly improved since, allowing faster progress. For example, recently a new type of document template (named Data Specification) was created in OMA to be used for all OMA deliverables for which there are no behavior associated. Some MO’s are perfect candidates for using this template, which will facilitate easier and quicker release of these MO’s by relaxing some of the ‘classic’ time-consuming production steps used for other standard documents which are totally redundant in the context of these Management Objects. OMA is further working on shortening the time to market for new device management technologies and has recently created an ad-hoc group dedicated to investigating and proposing further improvements. Sign #2 – The Success of FUMO 1.0 FUMO 1.0 was the first separate standard MO on top of the DM protocol. It became candidate in mid 2006 and released as an approved enabler, after a successful period of interoperability testing in February 2007. FUMO, which has been proven by extremely high success scores in interoperability fests, is the first DM application that expands OMA-DM beyond simple parameter configuration. This DM enabler is being deployed by leading vendors in the mobile industry, and provides a concrete and live environment from which the DM community can learn which design principles are working best and which concepts can be improved. Sign #3 – More Vendors Participating Leads to More Robust Technology that is More Widely Adopted Players from across the mobile value chain (and recently not only mobile, with the proliferation of OMA into the fixed environment) constantly show high interest and involvement in the DM Working Group, which implies high commitment and strong belief in that work. It also means greater motivation for companies to propose and push their initiatives, which is a vital factor in a contribution-based organization such as OMA. With the formal release of DM 1.2 (and FUMO 1.0) this level of interest is expected to sustain, if not grow. In fact, some ideas have been raised about taking DM beyond the mobile environment, in order to address some of the challenges emerging in the fixed telecom environment. Sign #4 – Expanding Use of the Technology Leads to New Requirements With this increased momentum, it should come as no surprise that there are multiple DM enablers showing nice progress: DiagMon, Scheduling, ConnMO, and DCMO. For example, the Software Component Management Object (SCOMO) Requirements reached Candidate and the Architecture is now being reviewed, while the technical specification also showed significant progress. On top of that, the recent creation of new enablers (such as Lock and Wipe MO) validates the momentum of DM being an acceptable framework for management in the mobile industry. Sign #5 – Care for High Quality, Consistency and Clarity In addition to this progress, the quality of the deliverables also improves as the DM Work Group improves the consistency across architectures of these various enablers. This consistency facilitates greater re-use of concepts, which results in better clarity, improved quality and shorter time for developing the specifications. But as an extra consequential bonus, it also suggests a greater potential for vendors to reuse some common components across their different MO implementations. Furthermore, many contributions proposed for the standard show great care for clarity and simplicity of the specification text, resulting in higher quality and ease of implementation. Summary In summary, the future of DM standardization appears to be positive. It builds on the strong foundation of standards created since 2002. With recent improvements to the process and organization around OMA, I believe the momentum surrounding DM and the various Management Objects will continue. Since OMA is a market-driven (and moreover, a contribution-driven) organization, the acceleration of the standards process is a strong indication that the business of DM is also taking off. Labels: device management, DM, FOTA, OMA, standards
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