iAnywhere Solutions, the mobile and wireless subsidiary of Sybase, is to enhance its m-business platform to enable delivery of Web services to mobile and wireless users. Using iAnywhere Solutions' always-available architecture, organisations can enhance mobile worker productivity with anywhere, anytime access to Web services information. This announcement is part of Sybase's comprehensive Web services strategy.
"As companies adopt Web services to automate the flow of information between applications, timely delivery of this information will make mobile workers more productive and competitive," says iAnywhere Solutions SA business development manager Deon Engelbrecht.
"Mobile Web services are a natural fit for iAnywhere Solutions given our mobile enterprise expertise, strength in application integration and commitment to open standards."
The iAnywhere Solutions m-Business platform extends the reach of e-business applications, messages, enterprise data and Internet content to mobile and wireless devices, including smartphones, PDAs and laptops. Built on J2EE, the m-business platform today supports key Web services standards including XML, SOAP (simple object access protocol), UDDI (universal description discovery and integration registry) and WSDL (Web service description language). Leveraging these standards, the iAnywhere Solutions m-business platform enables an enterprise to extend its existing Web services to a mobile and wireless environment - enabling anywhere, anytime access to business critical information.
iAnywhere's Web services will provide current enterprise applications with a convenient interface to its m-business platform. For example, says Engelbrecht, an integral part of the m-business platform is a standards-based interface for the development of message-based applications.
This enables developers to extend enterprise applications to mobile devices without coding for different devices, protocols, carriers and standards.
"iAnywhere Solutions plans to expose this comprehensive messaging architecture as a Web service," he adds. "This will enable enterprise applications and servers to easily send messages to a variety of mobile devices using different messaging protocols including SMS, e-mail and WAP push. The company also plans to provide a toolkit to allow developers to easily create additional Web services functionality."
Companies can combine Web services and the iAnywhere Solutions m-business platform to improve the efficiency of shipping and delivery operations. By leveraging Web services, two companies that rely on different internal business applications can integrate their systems and communicate quickly and cost-effectively. For example, upon the arrival of back-ordered items, a company's inventory management system could send order information through a Web service to its outsourced shipping company. The iAnywhere Solutions m-business technology can then send updated delivery schedules to the drivers' mobile devices, enabling them to make timely deliveries of newly available items.
iAnywhere Solutions' always available architecture, combined with local data storage, enables drivers to continue working throughout the day regardless of network coverage - the application automatically synchronises when the network becomes available.
According to Meta Group, mobile access to Web services will be a critical competitive differentiator, providing productivity gains through instant access to business information from any location. The research group says solutions that take advantage of industry standards such as SOAP and XML will provide businesses with additional benefits by facilitating the seamless integration of multiple Web services.
Share
Editorial contacts