Cape Town-based Korwe Software is taking on the big mobile applications platform guns - such as Oracle, SAP/Sybase, network operators and handset manufacturers - with the release of its mobile Web development tool called “The Core”.
Launched this week at the Dubai GITEX ICT trade show, The Core is an open source mobile enterprise application program (MEAP) that allows enterprises to mediate the start of the user experience at the front-end or Web page and the enterprise at the back-end, or server.
Korwe Software has been developing its platform over the past three years and has been aided by a R1 million grant from the Department of Trade and Industry, through its Support Programme for Innovation fund. The firm has already been trialling its software with some of SA's biggest mobi sites.
David Hislop, one of Korwe Software's founders and a director, says: “The Core has been created to make the mobile Web work in a simple and slick manner, it is about personalisation, it is about managing a user's profile so that the user gets what's important to them and not whatever the Web designer thinks is cool.”
He says that with the mobile Web there are no downloads or installations. These services also do not depend on the mobile network operators or the handset manufacturers.
“The mobile Web is not about clicking from page to page. People want just the right information. For instance, if a person is at a train station they want to know when the next four trains are leaving, not a 24X7 timetable of all the trains at the station.”
Hislop explains how The Core can be used by an enterprise.
“So if you have an enterprise that wants to create, say, a loyalty programme, you can speak directly to the customers without a Symbian, Signed App, or Java rigmarole,” he says.
According to a statement issued by Korwe Software, The Core's key functions include integrating mobile development with other enterprise information and business intelligence systems, supporting operational deployment and reporting, and managing social networks, payment gateways, and infrastructure gateways, among others.
The statement says The Core powers mobi sites, allowing for rapid creation of interactive online information sites accessed via mobile phones.
“These sites can offer multimedia content, information and entertainment to users in a way similar to if they install an application on their handset... but without the hassle or compatibility niggles,” it says.
According to the company, unlike apps specifically created for the iPhone, Android or other smartphones, a mobi site is device-independent - it can be used by any mobile phone. All that is required is a built-in Web browser.
Korwe Software is also pioneering “context” technology, a mixture of geo-location and social context, allowing seamless filtering, security and other important services, as well as automatic personalisation to enhance the mobi site user's experience.
A suite of plug-ins includes business intelligence, operational reporting, context engine, recommendation engine, fallout handling and backend services (for example, IMAP for mail and SyncML for diary and contacts), SMS, XMPP (presence and IM), oAuth, transaction servers and more. Back-end services are written in C#, Java and C++, and the host operating system can be Centos, Ubuntu or MS Server 2008. The front-end is currently .php, aspx or .jsp. Typically it would be used for pure dotmobi, but it can also plug in J2ME and others.
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