OMA: The "Alliance of Alliances"
>> Alliance of Alliances
The Open Mobile Alliance provides a standards-based approach to interoperability
Preston Gralla
Enabling the Wireless Enterprise
Fawcette Technical Publications
August 15, 2002
By bringing previously competing standards groups under a single umbrella, the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) is likely to accelerate wireless development standards, say vendors and analysts — if only because the wireless industry cannot afford for it to fail.
In June, six independent wireless development standards bodies — notably including the WAP (Wireless Access Protocol) Forum and the Nokia-led Open Mobile Architecture initiative — joined forces in an effort aimed at creating a common platform for handset manufacturers and wireless providers to support in their products and architectures (see figure). Providing a unified standard for end-to-end wireless data is seen as the key to jumpstarting software development for wireless devices, which the mobile phone industry is counting on for its next phase of growth.
"Right now, there's a great deal of complexity for developing a wireless application and making it available to a broad base of operators, handset manufacturers and customers," says Charles Golvin, senior analyst with Forrester Research. "It's like the early days of the Web when you had to have multiple versions of your site for different browsers. And it's much worse than that today in the mobile environment."
Requisite Open Approach
The OMA has not yet created any of its own standards, but will serve to integrate ongoing initiatives into a unified open technology framework. It will work in conjunction with other existing standards organizations and groups such as IETF, 3GPP, W3C, and JCP. The association's 200 member companies include the entire range of wireless and infrastructure heavy hitters, ranging from Microsoft to Nokia, Qualcomm, Motorola, Lucent, Symbian, Sun Microsystems, and many others.
In addition to the WAP Forum and Nokia's predecessor initiative, four other standards organizations also signed on and will contribute technology for GPS location information (Location Interoperability Forum); wireless synchronization standards (SyncML); video and graphics (MMS Interoperability Group); and wireless instant messaging (Wireless Village).
Key technologies to be promoted by the new OMA are Java, Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) for sending video and graphics, the XHTML Web page description language, WAP 2.0 for delivering Internet content wirelessly, and SyncML for synchronizing data wirelessly. By subsuming the WAP technology into the OMA platform, its session and transport protocols for wireless Web browsing may gain renewed momentum.
Tidal Shift
While it is too early to know whether the OMA's work will truly be the catalyst that jumpstarts wireless development, the unusual level of support from traditional competitors suggests that the industry is taking it seriously. A prime example is Microsoft, which has not participated in previous wireless standards efforts, but whose director of mobility standards now regards the OMA as "a tidal shift in the mobile industry."
Among device manufacturers, Qualcomm and Nokia don't agree on many things, but both hope that the OMA will be a boon to developers. William Plummer, vice president for strategic and external affairs at Nokia, says that because of the OMA, Java developers will be able to create wireless applications that run on many platforms "with a minimum of customization. They can write applications and interfaces that easily run on many different networks and platforms."
Gina Lombardi, senior vice president of marketing for Qualcomm Internet Services, agrees with Plummer, but warns that "some people believe that it may take several years for the standards to develop." She expects that messaging standards and GPS standards may be the first to be formalized, with other standards to follow, and adds that OMA's influence may be felt first in Europe, which has more of a history of agreeing on common wireless standards than does the U.S.
The flip side of broad participation is potential slow progress on contentious issues. "I can't imagine that Microsoft is getting religion on Java," says Seamus McAteer, principal analyst with the Zelos Group, who also points out that so far the group lacks a compliance committee, and thus "has no avenue for policing the standards once they are agreed upon."
Forrester's Golvin acknowledges that "companies have their ulterior motives and some internal squabbling is sure to be the case." However, he believes that in the long run the OMA will have a positive effect for developers looking to write standardized wireless applications.
Craig Mathias, a principal with FarPoint Group, agrees that in this case companies' common interests may outweigh their competitive instincts. "The [wireless] industry is in such a state today that they're all under pressure to say, 'We just have get to this done.'"
About the Author: Preston Gralla is the author of How Wireless Works, published by QUE. <<
- Eric - |
