Oracle and Vodafone Group will extend the potential
reach of web services to millions more mobile phones next month by
connecting Oracle 10g Application Server to Vodafone's SMS (Short
Message Service) system through a web services
interface.
A sample application at the OracleWorld conference and
exhibition in Paris demonstrated how a call centre can transmit
appointment requests from clients to sales staff via SMS, and then
automatically update a group calendar, based on their acceptance or
rejection of the appointment.
Such functionality is useful in sales force automation programs
or informing field engineers of work schedule changes while on the
job.
Sending SMS text messages to mobile phones from an enterprise
network is nothing new, but has, until now, involved writing custom
software and leasing a telecommunications link to connect the
application with the mobile network.
"If I have field workers and I want to send them alerts, I have
always been able to send them SMSs. Until this announcement, they
would have had to build an SMS gateway. Many businesses didn't do
it as the cost was too high," said Jacob Christfort, chief
technology officer of Oracle's mobile division.
Now that can all be done over a simple internet connection:
Vodafone has packaged the necessary access to its network as a web
service based on XML (Extensible Markup Language), and Oracle has
built an API (application programming interface) for the service
into Oracle 10g Application Server, so that application developers
can write code to send and receive SMS text messages much as they
would interact with any other web-enabled service.
Users of such services will pay Vodafone's standard SMS tariff,
according to Rikke Helms, mobile office director at Vodafone Global
Products & Services.
But the price paid by businesses to send an SMS using Oracle 10g
Application Server's built-in functions is irrelevant, Christfort
said, compared with "the millions of dollars that they would have
paid to systems integrators. Vodafone could double the cost (of the
SMS traffic) because of the cost this will cut off the front."
With built-in functionality like that, supporting mobile
applications is a no-brainer for businesses, according to one
analyst.
"Mobile sales force automation brings such quick returns, it's
hard to see why they would not do this," said Lars Vestergaard,
research manager for European wireless and mobile communications at
IDC.
A real bonus is that this works with existing handsets, he said.
Businesses developing sales force automation applications with
Oracle 10g can extend access to their database to workers equipped
only with an SMS-capable mobile phone, with no need for browser
functions such as WAP (Wireless Applications Protocol) or
high-speed data services such as GPRS (General Packet Radio
Service), over the Vodafone network.
Vodafone will, initially, allow businesses to connect to its
network through the web service interface in Australia, New Zealand
and eight European countries. Mobile workers roaming on any
Vodafone partner network worldwide will be able to send and reply
to the messages, Helms said.
Oracle's use of the code necessary to access the API is
non-exclusive, said Janine Young, group communications manager at
Vodafone Group Services. "We will be talking to other parties about
it," she said.
Those talks could involve companies such as SAP.
SMS is only the start of it, according to Vodafone. "We have
developed a roadmap that will allow us to do more advanced things
in the future, taking advantage of location-based services and
multimedia services," said Helms.
Peter Sayer writes for IDG News Service