The tangible benefits of mobile computing and the infrastructure that`s needed to securely support it are among the draw cards for a Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) road show being hosted by Hewlett-Packard and Nokia next week.
Designed to educate corporate South Africa on the flurry of applications designed for the mobile computing market, the road show will feature speakers from Nokia UK and Hewlett-Packard South Africa. This, says Mohamed Cassoojee, mobile e-services specialist at HP, will help companies capitalise on what promises to be massive value-added application market.
"According to Ovum research and studies by ICD, the global market for mobile Internet users is expected to grow to 500 million over the next five years - and over twenty percent of wireless subscribers will be conducting some form of mobile commerce transactions," he says.
"South Africa, which has one of the largest GSM subscriber base worldwide, is well positioned to take advantage of new services such as e-mail, banking, parcel tracking, reservation services, investment services, sports services and games.
"With the introduction of GPRS locally early next year - and newer technologies such as EDGE and 3G to follow - the increase in bandwidth and ease of connecting will create a more favorable for the deployment and use of these services. HP provides a complete secure platform for the provision of wireless services."
Nokia, one of the global instigators of WAP, will position the market from a technology, trends and developments standpoint. The company promises to highlight the business opportunities in the southern African market, as well as focus on its own offerings and the debate between large and small screen content, and then demonstrate prototype applications.
The WAP Developers Forum that Nokia has set up in South Africa is aimed at small IT entrepreneurs interested in generating valuable content to be delivered to WAP-compatible cellular phones.
HP, as a key provider of WAP infrastructure solutions, will offer delegates an overview of what is actually needed to ensure that a mobile computing solution adds value to a company.
"Our primary focus will be on the total solution architecture that is available for a WAP programme," explains Cassoojee. "This includes the [Windows NT and Unix] hardware, WAP gateway, web server and billing software."
Clearly security is also one of the key issues surrounding mobile computing solutions. It is here where the HP Praesidium suite comes to the fore. Billed as a portfolio of products and solutions that meet multi-level security requirements, Praesidium is built around an open security architecture.
"This enables businesses to protect multi-vendor application environments based on HP, Sun, IBM and Microsoft - part of HP`s commitment to offering end-to-end security solutions in heterogeneous WAP environments," says Cassoojee.
"Our approach for this initiative is to demonstrate the effectiveness of the security solution in the WAP environment compared to a more familiar situation - that of the Internet, for example."
Under the spotlight will also be the HP Mobile Bazaar - a forum for application developers and solution providers to collaborate on, and subsequently market, mobile solutions.
"The HP Mobile Bazaar has signed up partnerships with more than 30 application developers and solution providers," adds Cassoojee.
"The portfolio consists of value-added services which enhance operators` and enterprises` revenues, as well as infrastructure solutions that aim to serve customers in a reliable and secure environment."
Overall the companies will also examine the components necessary to support a successful mobile computing solution - the consulting that helps enterprises develop a mobile strategy and define the final solution; the integration that brings all the parts together and test them; and the support will help the customers to maintain and improve their mobile services.
More information on the HP-Nokia WAP road show can be found at www.hp.co.za and from HP South Africa.
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