Aquilonis helps you sync critical data on real time basis

Friends, this post is from my associate, Ms Usha Prasad! Read on!!

Are you looking for state-of-the-art products to run on your mobile handset which you feel is useful in your day-to-day life. Then, Aquilonis’ suite of mobile products/solutions is the right choice for you!

Bangalore-based Aquilonis, a mobile software products and solutions company, caters to the needs of vastly popular mobile platforms such as Windows Mobile, iPhone, Symbian, Palm, Android, Blackberry (RIM), etc.

Most solutions developed by Aquilonis are platform agnostic and have been proven in diverse areas like healthcare, gambling, advertising, enterprise mobility, calling card, etc. Its most recent product ‘Cross-Platform Management Suite’, a software suite for Smartphone operating systems, allows users to access their phone’s features remotely that features one click data transfers.

Formed by highly experienced IT professionals interested in Offshore Mobile Application Development, Aquilonis delivers high quality innovative solutions to today’s rapidly expanding global market.

Briefing on Aquilonis’ activities and market focus, co-founder and CEO, Rahuldev Rajguru said it started off as a mobile technology focused start-up company. Aquilonis is focused into providing cutting-edge technology solutions for mobile devices ranging from independent mobile phone users to a large scale enterprise. This can be in form of standalone software or a complex system with multiple interfaces and backend server.

“Our offerings are targeted toward mass users having mobile phones as well as for organizations that use mobile phones or handheld devices effectively – either for their employees or for their operations. Aquilonis’ technology and solutions are used by diversified clients across the geography and verticals. We have also filed the patent for our technology with the US PTO.”

Diverse mobile applications
Aquilonis offers diverse mobile applications development capabilities around its platform agnostic solutions. Its solutions are designed to meet customers’ requirements, irrespective of the nature of the application or platform they are looking at.

Rahuldev said: “We have developed mobile applications for platforms such as Windows Mobile, Symbian, Blackberry, iPhone, Palm OS, J2ME and Android. These mobile applications can be healthcare solutions, medical device integration, a multimedia application, telephony and messaging solution or even an enterprise application.”

The Aquilonis’ frameworks are capable of meeting specific customer demand and are flexible enough to customize as per the needs of the customers.

Solving data synchronization issues between client (handheld) and server
According to the company, Aquilonis has developed an exhaustive platform agnostic framework to help companies synchronize their data when they extend their software offerings onto the mobile, PDAs and handhelds.

“Having studied the customer requirements in detail, we have understood the core issue majority of them are facing in terms of integrating their back end data with the mobile application. When we looked at areas like enterprise mobility, healthcare mobility, mobile force, financial industry etc., we saw that they all have a mobile application or want to offer their services or products on the mobile, he said.

Some of the challenges these sectors face are:
* Integrating the existing data structure and synchronizing the data
* Avoiding duplication of data
* Prevention of data loss at the time of losing the network connectivity of intermittent outage of data channels
* Online authentication and validation of the data
* Accuracy and efficiency in data synchronization
* Data locking while accessing similar data fields by multiple mobile devices
* Speed of data transmission especially over GPRS/EDGE
* Existing database and platform where the server is hosted – customers are usually unwilling to make any changes in the database as well as the platform
* Existing platform on which the mobile application is implemented – customers prefer to integrate the existing applications instead of migrating them to a newer platform
* Flexibility to synchronize data real time, semi-real time or batch mode – this is crucial as it is unrealistic to expect that mobile device will always be connected on the Internet
* Security of data transmission
* Security in terms of mishandling of the mobile device by unauthorized personnel.

Aquilonis framework for data synchronization handles most of the pain areas listed above very well. The server component of the framework supports technologies like – J2EE, .Net and CC++

The framework is also capable of handling the data communication either via HTTP as web request or through socket connection using TCP/IP. The mobile device component of the framework supports all major mobile platforms including, but not limited to Windows Mobile, Blackberry and iPhone.

Aquilonis’ synchronization solution
This is Aquilonis’ major offering – in fact, it is said to be the first of its kind by any India firm.Aquilonis’ synchronization framework solution.

Rahuldev said: “This innovation of synchronization solution by Aquilonis is the first of its kind by any Indian firm. The data synchronization solution between the central server and mobile phones facilitates transfer of data between mobile phones and servers of all makes. This framework helps companies who want to reduce the duration of product development life cycle with aggressive ‘go to market’ strategy with fast, accurate and efficient data synchronization between their handheld or a mobile device and their remote database server.

“If you are developing software which is mainly going to be used by the personnel in the field, then your biggest challenge is to synchronize data of multiple handheld computers or mobile handsets with your remote server either on real time basis or with a batch mode. Our framework helps you build an exclusive data funnel, which supports transaction of multiple records of same of different tables and fields synchronously with the multiple handheld of mobile clients ensuring no data corruption and highest amount of data integrity with utmost speed, accuracy and efficiency.”

The Aquilonis framework relieves users from the worry of selection of technology or switching over to a different technology than what they are currently using.

“We have a blend of re-usability which adapts to any technology you currently work on as our framework supports all popular mobile platforms listed above. On the backend/server side, we support J2EE, .Net as well as C/C++ with database as MS SQL Server 2000/2005, MySQL and Oracle. You can enable your mobile data synchronization with the server over http or TCP/IP protocols which meet your business demand.

“You can use any communication medium provided by your handheld or mobile device like GPRS, EDGE, 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth etc. and our framework supports that as well. Virtually, we want to help our customers in reducing their “Go to Market” or “Ready for Production” cycle to a greater extent leaving behind all their worries with custom made solutions. Our framework is fully tested in the field by many of our clients, which ensures a safe and accurate data oriented business transactions at the end of the day,” he added.

The Aquilonis framework can be used (but not limited to) for the following applications:
* Field Auditors and Surveyors
* Sales Force/Field Force
* Market Research
* Online Casino and Lotto
* Healthcare and Patient Monitoring
* Content Manipulation and Delivery
* Rule based data filtering for Handheld and Mobile

Solutions for gambling and healthcare
Aquilonis offers synchronization solutions for gambling and healthcare, as well. In fact, it is doing quite well in these areas.

Rahuldev said: “The healthcare industry is moving faster towards extending the offerings to mobile devices, which includes legacy healthcare systems, patient monitoring systems, hospital management system as well as medical devices. Each of these verticals is extending its solutions offering to the mobile devices, and here again, the crux is data synchronization between the mobile device and the remote server.

“Our framework tunes itself as well as the mobile application in such a way that we deal with the existing database and the data structure of the legacy system. This allows us to take care of data security to a greater extent as we don’t create any intermediate data source for the mobile application to interact. Also, we have our custom developed protocols, which use XML as the underline markup language for secured data transmission between the server and the mobile client.

“Many gambling companies have started offering mobile-enabled or mobile-based gambling solutions. Our framework is quite useful to these companies as their requirement is to sync critical data on real time basis. At the same time, they want mobile gambling to also work on the semi-real time mode so that users are not required to have the data connection running all the time. Our framework addresses a complex requirement of syncing critical data on real time basis as well allowing user to use the remaining system on semi-real time basis.”

What else is in store?
Besides these, Aquilonis is offering diverse mobile applications which are platform agnostic. The other mobile applications are related to telephony and messaging solutions.
It also helps the advertisement and promotion management companies with multimedia delivery platform for mobile phones. The Aquilonis platform handles event-based video delivery and showcasing in order to catch user attention at the right time.

What’s ahead?
The Aquilonis Sync framework has evolved over a period of time and with customers demanding more features from it during each unique requirement of theirs.
“We plan to port the mobile client component of the framework to different mobile platforms like Android, Linux etc. Also, we are continuously adding more features and making it more and more robust even to handle unstructured data.

“Recently, we deployed the new version of our framework for one of the clients in Swaziland, whose data is quite unstructured. We implemented the whole solution without changing anything to the existing database and the data structure and still achieved 100 per cent functionality on the handheld device,” he concluded.

Vodafone deepens strategic partnership with EMC

BANGALORE, INDIA: EMC Corp. today announced that Vodafone has selected EMC as a preferred partner for storage and storage-related products in its European markets.

The deepening of the strategic relationship between the two companies will result in EMC receiving preferred vendor status for the next three years.

Under the terms of the agreement, EMC’s solutions will represent a significant proportion of the overall external storage capacity for all new storage-related purchases within Vodafone Information Systems’ data center control. This will help to ensure that Vodafone continues to provide continuous availability of all customer and corporate data – with an optimal Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) –- across Europe.

Vodafone currently uses EMC high-end and mid-range Storage Area Network (SAN) and Network-attached Storage (NAS) systems in its global data centers, as well as EMC storage management software and services.

With this agreement Vodafone and EMC have expanded their existing partnership to unify the maintenance and service for Vodafone’s European storage environment, and to help increase efficiency by consolidating around –- and upgrading to -– EMC’s industry-leading information infrastructure technology.

“Both Vodafone’s global brand and its established reputation are founded on technical excellence. EMC recognizes the significance of the endorsement that Vodafone has made in moving to work with us as a preferred storage solution partner in the European theater,” said Frank Hauck, EMC’s Executive Vice President, EMC Storage Division, Global Marketing and Customer Quality.

“We look forward to working with Vodafone more closely than ever, in this and in other areas of the EMC Information Infrastructure and Management portfolio.”

EMC has been a Strategic Supplier to Vodafone for several years, and was honored in 2006 with Vodafone’s Global Supplier Award in the “Best Performance in IT” category. EMC attained the company’s number one ranking in corporate responsibility, financial stability, commercial performance, technology, quality management, and delivery capability.

Welcome to PC's Telecom Blog!

Welcome to PC's Telecom Blog!

Hi friends, I've been thinking about adding a telecom blog to my network for a very long time! The reason being, I started my career in electronics and telecom back in 1989.

I had the privilege of being part of Asian Sources Telecom Products -- a site, which I managed and built, with the help of my team and colleagues at Asian Sources Media, and later, Global Sources. Later, I moved on to Wireless Week, USA, as Asia Pacific Editor for the Asian Edition.

Back in India, I managed Convergence Plus for a short while, before launching four sites for CIOL in 2004 -- Mobility, Networking, Storage and Security.

Given this background in telecommunications, it is apt for me to start a blog on this subject as well. Telecom has been my forte, and well, it is a subject that has also won me four awards in technology journalism, while at Global Sources.

Again, this blog has been spun out off my award winning blog! That blog remains unchanged, and will continue to carry top-quality, world class content!

This blogs will now include specific blog posts related to telecommunications, as well as press releases, industry updates, new products, features, statistics, etc. It will cover wireless, wireline, broadband, networking, optical networking, Test & Measurement, etc.

Thanks for your kind support as always. Suggestions for improvements are always welcome! :)

The Internet is going mobile!

This title of this blog has actually been borrowed from a statement made by Gadi Singer, vice president of Intel's Mobility Group and general manager of the company's SOC Enabling Group, which I came across on SEMI's site.

Is this a recent phenomena, or has the Apple iPhone led to a strong belief in this statement that the Internet is truly going mobile? And what was that craze for 'WAP bashing' some nine to ten years ago all about? Perhaps, it is a bit of both!

I was fortunate enough to use a WAP-enabled mobile phone back in Hong Kong, in 1999-2000, a Siemens model. I tried checking my Yahoo Mail on the phone with some success. Also, I found it very convenient to search for Indian restaurants in Tsim Sha Tsui. All of this, when the 'WAP bashing' was at its peak!

In 2001, at an event organized by Frost & Sullivan in Singapore, I was probably among the three people in a large audience found to be using the mobile phone for Internet access. This is so long back, that even I can't recall for sure how many folks were really found to be using mobile Internet! Anyhow! Those were also the days when mobile Internet, as a theme, was quite popular at global telecom events, largely driven by the craze for NTT DoCoMo's i-mode phones.

Well, no one really wanted to accept back then that the Internet was going mobile! Also, the flak that some of the European carriers had to take due to their obtaining various 'quite expensive' 3G licenses dimmed the concept of the mobile Internet.

We have come a long way since! While GPRS and 3G did bring some or quite large extent of the Internet to the mobile, possibly, the push really happened when this phenomena called social networking gathered steam.

The Apple iPhone, and now, the iPhone 3G, with its cool wireless social networking applications have truly ported the Internet to the mobile. The iPhone 3G is all the rage right now. Sales crossed the 1-million mark within three days, as per various reports on the Internet. That's some speed! That's also an outstanding indication of how people are making a dash for the phenomena called wireless social networking.

In the midst of all of this, 3G, and specifically, HSDPA (and W-CDMA), has come really come to stay. The telecom-media convergence has also happened very seamlessly in the background.

While the world's leading semiconductor firms continue to churn out one excellent chip after another, especially for mobile phones/telecom, it is time to acknowledge the fact that the Internet has truly gone mobile!

One last word. Do find time to stand up and applaud the hard work put in by the semiconductor and software industry, who make all of this happen.

Convergence driving technology trends, says Sasken chief

Sasken Technolgies was earlier known as SAS and it was focusing on product development. Later, it moved on to services. Speaking about this shift, Rajiv C. Mody, chairman and CEO, said that Sasken has always been, from day one, working on both simultaneously.

Sasken initially started out in the EDA space and had one product in the simulation space. It was writing a simulator, addressing large complex designs and methods to simplify the designs. Simultaneously, Sasken was also doing a lot of services for large telecom companies in the areas of designing. This was continued and eventually, Sasken expanded in the area of telecommunications.

Subsequently, Sasken started building products in the telecom space. However, one significant difference is that anything that it does, it impacts Sasken's customers' top line as Sasken address the R&D side of the business.

Not so long back, Sasken were also a VLSI player. It decided to disband the design tool part of the business and focus completely on communications. Now, Sasken does a lot of business in chip design, which is part of VLSI. Today, it is among the leading providers of semiconductor design, working on all kinds of complex system-on-chip (SoC), as well as 65nm design.

Sasken has filed for 39 patents so far, of which 16 have been granted. Those remaining are in the process, and typically, once a patent has been applied for, it takes four years before being granted.

It has invested close to Rs 40 crore in R&D in 2007. In the first two quarters of this financial year, it has invested about Rs 15 corers in R&D. Sasken focuses on next-generation technologies, which would shape up the way things are to come in this new, converged world.

Mody said: "The fundamental thing driving this entire change is convergence -- essentially entertainment, media, news, information -- all of it being available at push medium as well as pull medium. Wireless is also playing a very significant role."

All of these combinations are creating newer opportunities - starting with, say, for example, in the service provider-side, new billing methods have to be put in place because it's going to be triple- and quad-play kinds of situations.

Simultaneously, on the handset side, with more and more computing power being made available, newer kinds of applications have started playing significant role. As a result, Sasken is now scanning the entire gamut to position itself and take advantage.

Sasken will continue to invest in products in the mobile handset space. It also has a significant role to play on the multimedia and the application frameworks. Mody added: "To give you an idea, for the mobile handset, direct broadcast is going to play a significant role. People are already talking about high definition (HD) on mobile. You will see all those kinds of interesting things coming about, and we will participate."

Sasken had also acquired a Finnish firm. This acquisition has worked extremely well and its full integration has been done. Mody said: "We have significant engagements because of our presence in Finland and the capabilities that they bring, not only with the existing, but also with the new costumer base. We are thriving and this has given us the capability to do full end-to-end handset design and testing."