IBM Corp says it has changed its view on how the pervasive computing devices of the future will receive the networked services that make them useful. Instead of discrete services, it is building what it calls a service delivery platform, server- side infrastructure which will deliver content from ISPs or application service providers to devices according to users’ requirements. Think of it as a subscription-style model, IBM says. The platform makes a range of services available for all kinds of devices, the user – or the device’s programs – choose which to use.
The platform will include a package of management capabilities including transcoding, device administration, personalization and persistent information storage. Transcoding will ensure different kinds of web content can be displayed, provide filtering and translate between different mark-up languages. Specifically, it will offer a Mobile NetConnect platform which will enable web applications to run on PDAs, including Palm devices.
It will enable developers to write applications which can then be delivered via the platform to multiple kinds of appliances. The software borrows heavily from IBM’s Tivoli system management software, from WebSphere, and from other telecoms management resources.
IBM is committed to several emerging technology standards which it expects to be adopted by pervasive computing suppliers, including WAP wireless application protocol, the mobile network computer reference spec, ETSI mobile execution environment, Bluetooth, Open Card Framework and OPS Open Service Gateway. OPS is touted as providing the point of contact between the home and the network. It is supposed to be based upon Sun’s Java Embedded Server, although with Sun’s recent re-focusing of its ‘thin’ Java efforts around Java Micro Edition – which is expected to subsume Embedded and Personal Java – the make up of OPS is currently unclear. IBM says there are technical concerns about OPS which are now being discussed by Sun and its OPS backers, which include Oracle, Motorola, Lucent, Alacatel, Cable & Wireless, Ericsson, Nortel, Philips, Enron and Toshiba. Nevertheless, the gateway between the home and mobile devices and the network are crucial, IBM says.
On the client-side, IBM is creating a suite of software which it thinks will be required by most classes of devices. The suite includes Java, an embedded DB2, communications and a personal information manager. The client environment will be supported upon system software it is creating in conjunction with QNX Software Systems Ltd and its Neutrino real-time operating system.
IBM has been showing off some of its pervasive mettle at a Tomorrow’s World exhibition in London. It says it particularly likes the way Europe, having lagged the US in moving to the internet, appears to be embracing it with open arms, thinking of the way Eurocrats in Brussels are treating internet access as though it should be a human right.
