Mobile Who creates first global, mobile phone directory, e-business platform

In merging the power of the Internet with the versatility of mobile phones, Cape Town-based company Mobile Who has launched an international, Web-based mobile phone directory and e-business platform.

Claimed as a "world first", the development is designed to enable millions of cellphone users around the world to register their numbers and advertise their businesses to potential customers on a global scale.

"This is the first truly global, Internet-driven mobile phone directory of its kind," says Deon Perold, CEO of Mobile Who, which has also established a full business-to-business site where it can create new products and services for its business partners, among whom will be computer resellers, dealers, corporate clients and consumers from more than 100 countries.

The Web site was built by Compuscan Information Technologies using an Oracle database and employing a Java-based Web front-end. Compuscan is a software development house, which designs, develops, integrates and hosts software solutions often in partnership with Oracle.

Perold says Mobile Who`s site offers town, regions and suburbs listings, an intelligent search engine, SMS services, an online shop, a classifieds section, plus an address book in which to keep phone numbers - "useful if your cellphone gets stolen and you lose your contact list," he comments.

First conceived

He says the concept of a mobile phone directory was first conceived in 1995 when the mobile phone industry was still in its infancy. It took five years for the mobile phone market to reach maturity and for the company to realise its goal.

However, its first Web site malfunctioned and "crashed" last year as a result of a combination of poor site architecture and an operating system which could not handle the traffic - which ran to around 150 000 hits a month.

"Today, as a result of the Compuscan development, we have a fast and efficient Web site which can cope with the demands placed on it by users. It currently exceeds 30 000 page impressions a month," says Perold.

"We chose Oracle`s technology as we needed a global solution operating from multiple sites, yet running on one database. Our key requirement was for a system that can convert an English site to a Spanish or Japanese site quickly. This back office functionality of Oracle`s database gives us a multi-language and multi-currency capability, and a scaleable and powerful site, which can be replicated in various countries," says Perold.

Every country will eventually have its own online shop. Currently shops are active in Namibia, Botswana, Mozambique, Mauritius and Chile.

In addition, Mobile Who is actively building a global database and sourcing companies looking to do business on the Internet. This information is initially held on the Mobile Who Web site.

"By registering their businesses online our customers can maintain the integrity of their data and graduate to a full-blown web site of their own - this is especially beneficial for SMEs, and as a marketing site for corporate clients," adds Perold.

Technical perspective

According to Jaco Alberts, IT Director at Compuscan, the Mobile Who Web site uses the Oracle Intermedia cartridge for indexing of keywords and other text data to facilitate the searching of the database. Intermedia is also used for storing and retrieving image data to and from the database.

"We found that our development time was shortened and development complexity reduced by using Intermedia. We also found that by using Intermedia the speed of the searches has been increased. In addition, the software is interactive - it talks continuously to visitors to the site."

"Although the site was written in Java, we prepared most of the procedures and functions that needed to do a lot of data manipulation in PL/SQL - because for brute speed, flexibility and usability when doing data manipulation, Java, as yet, doesn`t get close to PL/SQL," he says.

"We use the PL/SQL Gateway to execute PL/SQL stored procedures directly from the Web. This makes retrieval of image data extremely efficient and simple to do."

"We have also extended the Oracle 9iAS (Application Server) platform by adding our classes to the Java environment."

Alberts adds that, although the site is using a Windows NT operating system, there are plans to migrate to Linux when the site is in full production.