Hidden challenges of a mobile service – part 1
I recently was given a questionaire about the SoonR service and why it was unique. It occured to me that a lot of the challenges of building a mobile service is hidden from view. If you think that creating a mobile web application is just about putting up a website with smaller fonts for a tiny screen, think again! Incompatible networks, handsets, and deployment models make it extremely challenging.
SMS – Simple messaging is not simple
For example, we had a early lesson when we decided to heavily leverage SMS in SoonR. To the uninitiated, it looks like you type in a number and the text magically appears on the recipient’s handset! What you don’t know is that all over the world, the networks are incompatible. There are aggregators (mBlox, SimpleWire) that pull different carriers from different countries together to “translate” cross networks and make this stuff work. It’s not easy work and it’s not cheap! SMS is one of those weird animals where you can be charged for sending and recieving, and even if the message never makes it to it’s destination, you get to pay for it! What other business do you know where customers put up with that? But I digress.
SoonR is partner focused. What I mean by this is that we depend on our partners to roll out the service and take care of many of the infrastructure issues that are unique to their country. There are also privacy issues related to customer billing info, etc. and we would rather not deal with that. By partnering with providers, the provider takes care of the billing and we can focus on the core technology.
The Deployment Challenge
During a meeting with a carrier prospect, they remarked that SoonR really understood deployment challanges. They even asked for our slide deck regarding our deployment model. The fact is, it takes a long time to roll out a branded service. Most projects that the carrier rolls out takes over year. With a mobile service like SoonR, you have to consider questions such as:
* Where is the data center physically?
* What parts of the world do they live for performance and redundancy?
* Where are the servers? Application, Load balancing, Database, etc.
* What hardware are you using in the datacenter?
* Whose Internet connection are we using?
* Which SMS aggregator or perhaps it’s the carrier’s own service?
* How is the data replicated?
* Whose managing the system for udates and uptime?
* Are there special handsets to support?
Recall that in the case of a carrier or other Web based service, some of these pieces may already exist. So there’s the very real possibility of a hugely fragmented deployment model as some partners want specific pieces to live in their infrastructure. One of the great benefits that our partners enjoy is that every part of the deployment process is modularized. We can create any combination of deployments that are hosted by SoonR and the partner. Not only that, we can brand it all to look like our partners offerings and even provide launch marketing, training, and support. All these “hidden” services combined with what the user ultimately sees, makes us unique in how we roll out services.
The Platform
SoonR is creating a platform for mobilizing all the digital information that defines your lifestyle at work and play. Each passing year people realize that they are storing more and more information digitally on multiple devices. They are also enjoying the freedom to be anywhere while staying connected. Whether on computers, digital media servers, TVs, or mobile phones each of these devices store a piece of our lives that we would like to have available to us in a uniform interface. SoonR brings all this together on a mobile device.
We are very unique because we are looking at the whole ecosystem and not just a point device. When a company partners with SoonR, they realize that under the features is a platform for deploying, understanding, supporting, and monetizing a service based on this new mobility that people enjoy.
Next up… How do you support all those handsets? (600 and counting…)