Friday November 23, 2007

After seven years @ Sun I have decided to take the next step in my career outside of the company. I want to thank all my friends and colleagues for your support over the years. Sun was always a great place - and its especially the people that make Sun such an amazing company.

It was a great time, thank you.

If you want to keep in touch, just ping me at Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo or Xing network.
My private blog is still running at www.e-thieme.de.

Wednesday October 17, 2007

Have you ever heard about Vodaphone? Me neither but I found this shop in southern Germany where they seem to sell a service from them - beside of T-Mobile's, E-Plus' (KPN subsidiary) and o2's (Telefonica) mobile services. Sorry for the low quality - I shot this pic with my mobile and had to change the contrast afterwards to make it more easy to read.
But it is hillarious, isn't it?

Monday October 15, 2007

Last thursday ICIN 2007 conference has closed his doors. ICIN, a world leading international conference on the intelligent service layer, applications layer, the signalling and control plane, mobility, the associated network transport and access layers of communications networks and deals with all aspects of services, networks, customer and terminal control was great again.

ICIN 2007 was be the eleventh in the series of International events which was initiated in 1989. These events have been highly successful attracting on average 250 delegates from over 30 countries, so as well this year! As reported in this blog earlier I was asked to work in the Technical Program Committee.

And to be honest I was amazed by the amount of papers we've got and their quality. More than 120 papers arrived to our committee which we screened. And we've choosen the most compelling ones to be presented in Bordeaux - still around 60 sessions and presentations. WOW!

And yes, we've had two speakers from Sun Microsystems in Bordeaux. Mauricio Arango, our CTO from Communications and Media Practice I'm working for spoke about "Providing End-to-End Network QoS via Overlay Networks and Bandwidth On-demand". Bernd Kaponig, Principal Architect and a brain in SDP area presented about "Agile Service Assembly - SOA in Service Delivery Frameworks". You want to know more about this? Ping me via mail.

Here are the top findings of ICIN:

• Business Models
  
  • Telcos should not fall in agony and wait and see what the Googles do next. Proactive collaboration based on the assets Telcos own is a way out of the valley of depression
    
  • Telcos have a new wholesale opportunity based around the trusted environment provided for users – although some question the existence of this trusted relationship
    
  • Investigation of new business models should be prioritized compared to old-style product development
    
  • The answer on technological uncertainty is to focus the Telco R&D on layered functions and modules that can rapidly used for future service deployments
  
  
• New services and applications
  
  • The telecoms industry still does not take sufficient notice of end user requirements when planning new services and often fails to match user expectations – a perpetual beta approach may create the next killer applications
    
  • Subscribers become content providers and thus take an active role on which community services rely
    
  • Community services attract a huge amount of subscribers
    
  • Quadruple play with IPTV over IMS for next gen TV with personalized content may become the next killer app. Telcos can provide high-value statistical info to broadscasters and content providers
  
  
• New services and applications
  
  • Converged charging and billing solutions are a must have for higher efficiency in network operation, provisioning and user satisfaction
    
  • Identity Management and AAA are the basis for new applications in mCommerce and mPayment
    
  • Service enablers as service delivery components have to be open and have to support composition with other enablers, e.g. context awareness, presence and location using web server technology
    
  • The migration of the IN-values to next gen service enablers in an IMS and web service environment needs still more investigation
    
  • APIs which make Telco/IMS capabilities accessible to Web application developpers are key
    
  • The SOA technology is used for network near solutions already and research is yet done at the borders of IMS, SOA and SDP
    
  • HSS and data centers are the basis for efficient profile management
    
  • Customizable software testing leads to rapid NGN / IMS service development & deployment
  
  Want to know more about ICIN? Have a watch at www.icin-conference.com. We'll post more info here as soon as possible. And we will let you know about the next year's conference!
  Posted by Horst Thieme ( Oct 15 2007, 05:44:50 PM CEST ) Permalink
  
  

Wednesday August 08, 2007

Convergence has become one of the most central and significant issues faced in the Technology, Media & Telecommunications sector today – shaping everything from product and service launches to catalyzing multi-million dollar mergers and acquisitions.

Convergence Conversations, a book published by Deloitte comprises interviews with 36 senior executives from the converging world. In this PDF you'll find interresting insights from executives from companies like NTT, Gartner, BenQ, SK Telecom, General Electric, Telenet, Orange, Vodacom, Telegraf, Telefonica, oogle, RIM and Time Warner and many other more.

There is a wide range of views on how the subject should be approached – with original perspectives on the rationale and scope of convergence that others will find of interest and learn from. Have a look on this.

In my understanding, Identity is key for this convergence play. If services, networks and devices will come together nothing else matters than the underlying identity management.

It might be that tk20208, Lady16 or MillionDollarInvestor_2007 are relevant customers for you. It might be not. Perhaps all three identities are belonging to only one person. Perhaps on different services, handsets or networks.
Will you be able to manage this?

Tuesday August 07, 2007

Some people think of Web 2.0 only in terms of an advanced collection of web interface technologies and consider web applications with a pop-up calendar, a rich text editor, or drag-and-drop functionality as being all there is to Web 2.0. But when these capabilities are joined with the idea of the read/write web, then the true power of Web 2.0 emerges.

For example, the pop-up calendar is the user interface for an online calendar that is shared with other members of a group, and clicking on the date checks the availability of the other people in the group to make meeting scheduling easier. The rich text editor is the user interface for a wiki that enables users to quickly and easily publish documents that can be shared with other members of a group.

Today I read an interresting blog entry from Matt Rogers about how Web 2.0 affects users. As this is a great summary please find the main points in following. Matt sees three topics which are important:

"Personal expression – It gives users a greater ability to express their personalities to others
Efficient connections – It makes meeting new like-minded people more efficient
Information discovery – It changes how people discover information"

Sure, so far nothing new and not really rocket science, as Matt admits. But:

...”none of these dynamics are new or unique to Web 2.0 – they represent some of the core motivators of most humans – all Web 2.0 has done is make achieving these human objectives online easier.

From its aggregation capabilities to community support, self-publishing features, and collaboration services, a portal implemented using Sun Java System Portal Server gives you access to better web technologies to build the read/write web.

Tom Mueller, a colleague at Sun, has written an excellent article at developers.sun.com about Web 2.0 and Sun's Portal server, where he points to many other sources. Have a look on it!

Wednesday August 01, 2007

comScore released the results of a global study into online gaming, showing the number of unique visitors to these sites to have reached almost 217 million worldwide – a year-on-year growth of 17 percent.

The comScore World Metrix study took into account all sites that provide online or downloadable games, excluding gambling sites. The sector attracted 28 percent of the total worldwide online population in May and recorded an average of 9 visits per visitor.

“With one in four Internet users visiting a gaming site, playing games online is extremely popular. The fact that these websites are pulling in over a quarter of the total worldwide Internet population shows what a global phenomenon gaming has become”, said Bob Ivins, EVP and managing director of comScore Europe. “The potential of the online gaming arena should be especially appealing for advertisers, as the average online gamer visits a gaming site 9 times a month.”

According to the report, Yahoo! Games was the largest property, attracting 53 million unique visitors. MSN Games followed in second place, having grown by 16 percent since May 2006 to reach 40 million unique visitors in May 2007. Both properties provide a mixture of strategy, trivia, arcade, and board games, with puzzle and card games proving to be the most popular choices for gamers in both cases.

The fastest-growing Top 10 gaming property was WildTangent Network, a US company that makes online and downloadable games, which grew by 398 percent year-on-year to attract 11.5 million unique visitors in May 2007. The site also attracted an average 12.2 visits per visitor, notably higher than any of the other top 10 gaming properties.

But as your business grows - can you really grow fast enough your service quality to meet the expectation from your customers? You need an infrastructure who can grow with it. Project Darkstar is designed to provide an environment for game developers that allows scaling.

Have a look into the paper from Jim Waldo, Distinguished Engineer and
Karl Haberl, Research Director both from Sun Microsystems. They just gave an great overview about the open sourced game server technology from Sun Microsystems. In this paper both explain how scaling can be achieved through the use of the inherent parallelism found in virtual environments without requiring that the programmers coding such environments learn either distributed computing or multi-threaded programming.

Project Darkstar presents an illusion to the programmer that the code for the server side of the application is running on a single machine in a single thread. In fact, the work being done by the server can be spread across any number of machines and threads in a way that allows both increased scaling and fault tolerance. Learn more at Project Darkstar Overview.

Tuesday July 31, 2007

According to a new report from Infonetics Research, worldwide IPTV equipment revenue hit $423.9 million in the first quarter of 2007 – after an incredible year 2006 where the worldwide IPTV equipment manufacturer revenue jumped 153%.

As Infonetics states service providers around the world increased pure IPTV service revenue 178%. And 2007 seems to strengthen this growth. As comScore found out, nearly 75 percent of U.S. Internet users watched an average of 158 minutes of online video per user during the month. Google Sites topped the monthly rankings with both the most unique video streamers and most videos streamed. According to comScore more than 8.3 billion video streams had been sawn online in US in May, and Google Sites once again ranked as the top U.S. streaming video property with 1.8 billion videos streamed (21.5 percent share of streams), 1.7 billion of which occurred at YouTube.com. Fox Interactive Media ranked second with 680 million streams (8.1 percent), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 387 million (4.6 percent) and Viacom Digital with 237 million (2.8 percent).

But the average stream duration was only 2.5 minutes. So is this competition to the traditional TV stations? Yes and no. Yes: The new experience distracts from classical TV so it is competition. No - as there will be still a need for highclass movies with high quality. So traditional TV operators have to have an eye on the new competition.

The answer for them is Personalized Television: Give the consumer what they want - short snippets, long movies, high quality and everything customized. Sun just lowered the cost of high-capacity video streaming over IP to less than $50 per stream, roughly half the traditional cost. The new Sun Streaming System brings game changing economics while providing you integrated video caching, streaming, and optical transport - all in one high-density, integrated streaming system over IP. Have a look on this.

And come, visit us at IBC this year.
We’ll be there – keen talking with you.

Tuesday June 26, 2007

Synchronica plc, an international provider of mobile synchronization and device management solutions and a great and longterm partner from Sun, received the Mobile Service award at the eco Internet Awards 2007 in Cologne for Mobile Gateway 3.0. Synchronica was announced as the winner of the prestigious award for the best product in the Mobile Service category at the eco gala event in Cologne, Germany.

Synchronica, an expert in push email, beat off the fierce competition of more than 200 other applicants to convince a jury of press, analysts, IT and telecoms experts that the Mobile Gateway was the best mobile service product. Synchronica joins a high profile list of previous winners including Monster, the jobs portal, Xing and Siemens Business Services.

Every year the association of the German internet enterprises (eco) awards a prize to companies for an innovative and extraordinary product or service which brings a significant user benefit.

Congratulations!

Friday June 08, 2007

Sun has today launched the Sun Secure Data Retrieval Server (SDRS) to help communications service providers address the EU Data Retention Directive requirements with a powerful, secure and flexible end-to-end solution.

EU Data Retention Directive
In the field of telecommunications, data retention (or data preservation) generally refers to the storage call detail records (CDRs) of telephony and internet traffic and transaction data (IPDRs) by governments and commercial organisations. In the case of government data retention, the data that is stored is usually of telephone calls made and received, emails sent and received and web sites visited. Location data is also collected. The primary objective in government data retention is traffic analysis and mass surveillance. By analysing the retained data governments can identify the locations of individuals, an individual's associates and the members of a group

The Directive as adopted from the European Government covers fixed telephony, mobile telephony, Internet access, Internet email and Internet telephony. Member States are required to transpose it into national law no later than September 2007.

Compliant for today, protection for the future
Sun SDRS is designed as the industry's first end-to-end "plug-and-comply" appliance solution. Powered by CopperEye's revolutionary "Live Archive" technology, SDRS addresses not only the secure retention and life cycle of communications data but also the business processes by which this data is rapidly retrieved and securely disclosed, as defined in the EU directive.

With the new EU requirements for capturing and storing large volumes of compliance data such as call detail records and IP traffic, the requirement for fast secure retrieval of selected records makes traditional approaches of utilising a relational database or data warehouse too complex and too costly. Unlike traditional technology alternatives, Sun's unique approach gives communication providers a complete, open standards-based solution secured through Sun's Solaris Operating System and the Sun Secure Global Desktop Software. Furthermore, the system can be deployed in a matter of weeks, rather than months required for other solutions, helping companies meet tight deployment deadlines without diverting IT staff from revenue-generating business projects.

Key features of Secure Data Retrieval Server (SDRS) include:

1. “Plug and Comply” appliance solution with full compliance request & disclosure workflow
   
2. Coppereye's Greenwich Indexing technology, optimised software for scale and performance
   
3. Built upon the world's first data server with integrated AMD Opteron processors, massive data storage and throughput providing unrivaled energy efficiency
   
4. Sun's Solaris 10 Operating System, the most secure OS on the planet, providing security features previously only found in Sun's military-grade Trusted Solaris
   
5. Sun Secure Global Desktop Software providing secured access to the appliance from a wide range of popular client devices regardless of location
   
6. TruSeal technology adds evidential weight by proving the authenticity of disclosure contents, identity of the originators and independently verifiable data & time.

Learn more at the solution overview doc.

Wednesday May 09, 2007

As written yesterday Ericsson will open source its SIP stack through project SailFin. Sun will use the SIP stack, integrated with GlassFish, to develop a SIP-enabled, IMS-ready app server, aka Sun Java System Communications Application Server. Ericsson will then license back the comms app server and embed it into its infrastructure software and applications.

Why is this relevant? The convergence between IT and Telecommunications Industry is one key trend to allow this portability of services across networks and devices. This will drive new kind of applications, connected to the network and communicating over the network. This will bring IT and telco industry together.

In order to support the convergence between these two industries, Sun and Ericsson will join forces to offer third party developers access to converged services delivery platforms through their respective developer programs.

And to be honest: This was one of the exciting things I was asked to drive on the last months. And now - it's life. Up and running! Fantastic.

Why do we do this? We want to speed up the market. By building on existing programs and relationships with developers on each side, Ericsson and Sun aim to attract, educate and offer the tools, infrastructure and network testing environments for developers and ISVs. This means new kind of applications because of new technology. And because Ericsson and Sun are also committed to providing these supporting technical programs and testing capabilities, developers will be able to more easily prepare and verify applications for use in the new environment.

Actually this is a great thing. If you want to be part of this initiative go to http://java.sun.com/javame/partners/

Tuesday May 08, 2007

Now it is finally official: Ericsson today announced a collaboration agreement with Sun to develop an open source Java technology-based multimedia application server as well as a supporting program for the developer community. With this collaboration, Ericsson will contribute parts of its server development to the open source project GlassFish. The supporting program includes a variety of tools and expertise to support developer communities, as well as a possibility for developers to test their applications on a live IMS-based network.

In order to support the convergence between IT and telecommunications industries, Sun and Ericsson will also join forces to offer third party developers access to converged services delivery platforms through their respective developer programs, such as the Sun Developer Network, Sun Partner Advantage Program and Ericsson Mobility World Developer Program.

If you are working for a Software Company and if you want to learn more about this please contact me. I'm more than happy to point you to the right sources.

What will happen next?
Ericsson will take module ownership for the JSR 289 Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) container in the open source project called GlassFish. Ericsson will also contribute its standards-based SIP Servlet 1.0 application server, to the GlassFish community under the OSI-approved Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL). Ericsson will license the forthcoming Sun product, along with the Sun Java Systems Application Server, to embed in solutions built by Ericsson. Ericsson also plans to standardize development of applications and services on the Sun Java System Communications Application Server.

Thursday May 03, 2007

Today, the Mobile Networking Day event started again in Cologne, Germany. After 2006 (Cologne) and 2005 (Berlin) this has been the third event together with our partner Netzwert. After another successful year and the third year of MND this event has become a recognized annual conference.
This year's motto was "From Bandwidth to Business".

Escaping the Flat-Rate Dilemma
Looking at the portfolio of mobile and fixed line operators today, a dominance of access bundles, flat rates and plan options in the carriers’ value propositions can hardly be ignored. Often the striving for the best product has become a question of combining a boldface headline and two pages of fineprint in order to optimize revenue and margins. In that respect, network convergence has become a means to solely reduce operational cost and maintain competitiveness in a market of flattened subscriber growth and decreasing per-user revenues.

Our today's keynote speaker Prof. Dr. Jens Böcker from the University of Applied Sciences Bonn-Rhein-Sieg warns "There is no need for desperate pricing actions in the market. Stop the price war!" For Böcker it is up to the service providers to react on the changing customer requirements. The end-users are not anymore passive - they're starting to design their own services and sharing them in communities.

But will Web 2.0 be an opportunity or a threat for Carriers?
In the last years a series of innovative business models have emerged, driven by Internet startups, which mostly rely on advertising revenues and social interaction. Most of them still have to prove long-term profitability and growth, and not all of them are suited for a mass market. However, all of these new services have one thing in common: Despite their dependance on network bandwidth, the revenue streams that these services create bypass the pockets of the network operators.

Elmar Kinkel, COO and Stephan Hock, Manager Professional Service of Cocus AG, a consulting company which sponsored together with us this event, focussed on their presentation on explaining how deeper understanding of this broadband experience will lead to the design of successful, innovative and future-trend-setting applications like SecondLive or World of Warcraft. Online Gaming is big and is still growing: alone 3.4 billion Euro had been earned in 2006, 1.7B Euro was mobile gaming. As a servce provider, so Kinkel, you can be the man in the middle. And you can offer services cross networks like from PC to mobile and vice versa. (That's by the way why I believe in our gaming server Project Darkstar which offers right this. And btw. it's open sourced! Use it.)

Paul da Silva (Business Development Communications Industry EMEA) pointed out in his presentation, that there's much more out there than consumer services like Gaming, Dating and Photosharing. His provocative questions: "Is web 2.0 really only internet for the lonely?" He says no. What about the business and their need to drive their internal communities (= workgoups!)? He pointed to Project MPK20, Sun Lab's project to virtualize your office and work in an virtual environment like you know from services as SecondLife. Team members, regardless of physical location, can maintain awareness of what their team is working on by scanning the contents of the room.

Advertisement - The new revenue stream for mobile carriers
Ralf Holighaus, President & CEO of Netzwert AG spoke about "Business Revolution for Mobile Data". He identified two trends in the market - the full service providers like e.g. Vodafone with own/branded services and the "no thrills" operators like MVNOs which go for a bit-pipe-only strategy fighting for customers with low prices and with only a handful services. But are these two the only opportunities you can think about? "Think about analogies in other markets", so Ralf Holighaus, "what about EasyJet and Lufthansa? There is a trend to open additional revenue streams with complementary products, comissions from 3rd party companies (hotels, rental cars, online casonos etc) - and advertising."

And true: Mobile network operators have big advantage again other companies: They have a billing relationship, they know the location and as well the identity of the end customer. This trusted relationship will help service providrs to think about new and appealing services sponsored through advertisement. And this might give carriers unexpected sources of income and will help to compete with "no frills" operators and their aggressive pricing AND still being able to offer high-quality services...

Manfred Götz is responsible for technical strategy, development and deployment of content and service protection at Vodafone. In this context he has gathered experience as technical project manager for the Vodafone Full Track Music service, which has been successfully launched in 19 countries. Later on he introduced digital rights management (DRM) for Vodafone's global platform, which has been successfully deployed in 24 countries. His current position includes technical overall responsibility for service and content protection at the global platform, as well as support for Mobile TV, DVB-H and MBMS projects at Vodafone. You can bet that his views about "Service Protection - Revenue Enabler in Mobile Broadcast Business" had been very interesting for all of the participants.

Manfred Götz talked about the new opportunities USIM Cards will provide. For example to use them as an alternative to DRM as a key to get access to content and the challenges if you want to go this way for platforms, mobile handsets and SIM cards. At the moment carriers struggle with different service protection solutions which are sometimes proprietary, sometimes standards based, some handset dependant and others depending on the USIM. Actually this is definitly interesting as this will really connect two very different worlds - the integration of mobile TV applications into core network.

Why Telcos should not build „Toasters“
Michael Heuer (Vice President, Business Development & Consulting for Global Telecom Markets (formerly Wholesale Business), at BT Global Services) was the last speaker of the event with a wonderful presentation about Telco 2.0 and his provoking title "Why Telcos should not build 'Toasters'". "Everybody would wonder if EON, RWE or other Energy companies would start building toasters to increase their revenue", so Michael Heuer in his visionary presentation. "But in the service provider market it is exactly like this exampel - carriers try to built toasters...".

In his view everyone is innovative - but not the operator. They should concentrate on their main work, building networks - like BT did with BT's 21st century project.

Summary
In my understanding most of the presentations we saw today have been around Identity: If you don't know the customer, you can't offer appealing services. If you know that you're customer travels (because his mobile is roaming a lot), have friends in foreign countries (because of international calls to non-business hours) or likes city trips you can offer different advertisement and give access to this knowledge to other companies (without loosing your ownership of the customer). This is why operators should look for federated identity solutions to open up for external services. This is why Sun's driving the Liberty Alliance and our own identity management solutions like Java System Identity Manager.

Prof. Dr. Jens Böcker summarized the trend in the telco industry: Business models and technology are changing at the same time. Technology is now available for everybody. And the rules are changing for all players in the market. The key to success is to have a platform that offers services flexibly and quickly, based on company requirements. Böcker's clear message: "Don't wait. Act!"

This event will end tonight with a speech from Tim Renner, former CEO of Universal Music in Germany. At Universal Music he worked with a wide range of different stars like Eminem, Sting, Texas, Pavarotti, U2, Bon Jovi, Howard Carpendale or Rosenstolz. After leaving Universal and a journey around the world Renner published a book about the media industry in September 2004 and is one of a hundred managers worldwide who have been nominated as global leader for tomorrow by the world economic forum (Geneva/ Davos). He will talk about the change which happened in the music industry and how they tried to ignore the change. His answer: “In times of change the best way to survive is to attack yourself!”

More about this tomorrow...

Wednesday May 02, 2007

Are you a developer? Do you want to win a LCD HD TV? The following info might be interresting for you - because if you blog about GlassFish you have a chance to win a 52-Inch LCD HD TV.

GlassFish V2 Beta, the next major version of Sun's open-source Java EE 5 application server, provides enterprise features such as clustering, administration, Web Services Interoperability Technology (WSIT), NetBeans IDE integration, native SOA support through Java Business Integration (JBI), and load balancing to support highly scalable, volume enterprise deployments for service-oriented architecture (SOA) and Web 2.0 applications.

GlassFish and its surrounding components now support open-source scripting technologies for creation of rich next-generation web applications. It is available for download today and helps enterprises build and deploy SOA and Web 2.0 applications and services leveraging next-generation web technologies such as Ajax, scripting, and REST that simplify development and deployment of scalable, interactive applications.

Try these new technologies and blog about your experience using GlassFish in production deployment. We would like to know how GlassFish's reliability, performance, manageability, ease of use, and new features address your needs. You may also suggest new feature enhancements for the upcoming GlassFish V3 release. Please remember to mention the download location of GlassFish in your blog.

How to participate? Easy!

Tuesday April 17, 2007

Sun Lab did it again. They started an incredible cool project called MPK20. In short it's SecondLife for professionals. But not to be bored by lonesome people all night long. It's more about being more effective and more successful during you daily job!

On any given day, over 50% of Sun's workforce is remote - and actually that's me included. MPK20 is a virtual 3D environment in which employees can accomplish their real work, share documents, and meet with colleagues using natural voice communication. Just like on Sun's physical Menlo Park campus, known as "MPK," inhabitants of the virtual MPK20 office building can work together in planned meetings, or can talk informally in unplanned encounters. Unlike the physical campus, however, in MPK20, community can be built and maintained without the constraints of physical location.

The goal of MPK20 is to allow users to conduct all their real work within the virtual environment so that doing private work and sharing with others can be accomplished seamlessly, without the need for a special application sharing tool. The team room and surrounding private work spaces are filled with documents and whiteboards. Team members, regardless of physical location, can maintain awareness of what their team is working on by scanning the contents of the room.

The technology is based by the way on Sun Labs' Voice Bridge, a software written in Java that handles Voice over IP (VoIP) audio communication and mixing for tasks such as conference calls, voice chat, speech detection, and audio for 3D virtual environments. The Voice Bridge supports a range of voice qualities from telephone to CD-quality. In addition, the Voice Bridge supports stereo audio and the ability for each individual connected to the Bridge to have their own private voice mix. Click on the image below to see a larger image of a poster about the Voice Bridge.

The Voice Bridge is a scalable, SIP-based platform for setting up and managing conference calls. Calls can either be entirely VoIP or combined with calls routed through a PBX. The Voice Bridge manages conferences, allowing members to join or leave the conference. It is responsible for receiving and mixing speech and sending the mix out to each member of the conference. Speech detection is done by the Voice Bridge so individual speakers can be identified easily.

Additionally, each caller can have his or her private mix of the conference. This supports a variety of features ranging from individual volume control to multiple, private voice chats within a single conference. The Voice Bridge has been in use internally at Sun since 2004 for conference calling as part of the Sun Labs' Meeting Suite prototype software.

And only "by the way": The MPK20 software is additionally built on top of the Sun's Gaming Server infrastructure, called Project Darkstar.

Isn't that REALLY cool?

Friday April 13, 2007

RaccoonOnMap is localisation service for your mobile phone whicch can show your location - and the on of your friends without using GPS technology. RaccoonOnMap has been built by engineers from Nokia and has been made public already in February 2007.

In RaccoonOnMap, the mobiles act as a location Web service providers via Raccoon (consists of a port of the Apache web server to the S60 smartphone platform - in short it is a mobile web server). The RaccoonOnMap server provides a mashup mixing Web services from mobiles and Google Maps.

All the queries are send from the mobile phone to the RaccoonOnMap server which will propagate the requests to the registered mobile users. The RaccoonOnMap server queries the location of the mobile with a Python script accessable via Raccoon web server. The mobile returns a location information of its current location.

The location information can be either GPS or GSM cell id information. If the mobile user has a bluetooth GPS device, the Python script reads the coordinates from it and return then with the cell id information to the RaccoonOnMap server. The RaccoonOnMap server adds the cell id and the corresponding GPS coordinates to its location database. If the mobile user does not have a GPS device, it will return only the cell id to RaccoonOnMap server, which will then calculate an approximations of the cell coordinates from it's location database.

When the RaccoonOnMap page is loaded it contacts RaccoonOnMap server and fetch the user information. The page refreshes itself every few minutes and therefore fetch the RaccoonOnMap users again from the server. You can force to fetch the information by reloading the RaccoonOnMap page.

All online users and those offline users which have given permission to show their location are marked in the map. Offline users are put where they were last seen. If the user is online the marker turns to red and more information is available. By clicking the marker on the map, the viewer can also send (anonymous) messages and ask the mobile user to take a picture with the mobile phone's camera. The viewer can also 'trace' the user by pressing the "TraceOn" button. The location of the user is then queried every 10th second and the trace of the users movement is drawn to the map.

The location database stores the information of the registered user's id, cell id, GPS coordinates and the time. These values are then used to calculate the approximations of the GSM cells. The calculated cell location approximations, which the RaccoonOnMap service gives out, do not anymore have the information of the user id. The original location database is still preserved and the user id is stored until the registered user wants to remove his/hers account or the RaccoonOnMap service is terminated, in which case all references to individual user's locations are deleted.

More info at http://raccoon.openlaboratory.net/RaccoonOnMap.
The topic is discusses as well at Forum Nokia if you have technical problems.

Thursday April 12, 2007

Vodafone Betavine is an online public, collaborative research and development space looking at encouraging the further convergence between the mobile phone and the internet. It is also aimed at encouraging the development of exciting new mobile applications. And anyone with an interest in mobile applications can join for free.
Vodafone Betavine is a pre-commercial space for collaboration and is not directly linked into the commercial functions of Vodafone.

Even if you're not a developer you gain after registration the right to access the full application download list (which is much bigger than the restricted list that casual visitors can access). Beta testers will be able to shape the development of these applications and suggest new applications.

So why Vodafone is doing this effort? "We hope that it will encourage innovation and act as a platform for some of the hidden talent in the world of mobile application development. We also anticipate that the site will encourage discussion and debate ensuring that visitors play an active role in creating new wireless and internet communications applications", so the responsible people from Vodafone Betavine.

More info at http://www.vodafonebetavine.net.

Wednesday March 14, 2007

Wednesday March 07, 2007

Now it's official - on monday at the 2007 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco we announced plans to open source Project Darkstar, a ground-breaking online game server platform written entirely in Java technology. Additionally we also announced the opening of registration for the Darkstar Playground, which will enable developers to create a wide variety of games that can be provisioned through a single server platform.

Game developers can download the latest version of Project Darkstar at www.projectdarkstar.com. This new release of Project Darkstar features a simpler programming interface for increased productivity; plug-in APIs to facilitate integration of third party extensions; and enhancements for scalability , robust performance, and fault-tolerant operation. The source code for Project Darkstar will become available under a GPL license in the coming months, and further details will be provided at Sun's JavaOne conference May 9 in San Francisco.

But the most exciting news news was that the leading MMORG Developer NCsoft validates Darkstar! They have built Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games (MMORG) like Guild War and many others...

More info can be found at the official Press Release.

Tuesday March 06, 2007

I'm asked to join the Technical Programme Committe of the ICIN conference, which will happen 8 - 11 October 2007 in Bordeaux, France. Headline for this exciting event will be "Emerging Web and Telecom Services: Collision or Coopetition?".

Until March 12 ICIN 2007 is still seeking papers on a wide range of topics related to theme "Emerging Web and Telecom Services: Collision or Coopetition?" and we from the Technical Programme Committe are seeking high quality, innovative papers on Web, IMS, and content services, architecture, and technology. Therefore we welcome proposals for papers concerning in the interplay of intelligence in end-user devices, residential gateways, enterprise systems, access network, core network signalling and control, as well as applications, service architectures, and business models which build on this interplay.

CIN2007 Call for paper focus and thematic priorities are :

1. New Services and Applications
   
2. Business Models
   
3. Service Architecture
   
4. Service Enablers
   
5. Network Infrastructure and Device Technology

Friday February 16, 2007

Especially for the european market Sun and Comptel Corporation, a leading Operations Support System (OSS) software vendor for convergent mediation, charging, provisioning and network inventory, announced this week at 3GSM that we'll jointly provide a turn-key Data Retention Solution to mobile and fixed telecom operators worldwide for data retention of voice call and Internet traffic related data. The Data Retention Solution is designed to fully support the requirements of the European Union (EU) Data Retention Directive (EDRD), including phase two, which covers the retention of data from IP and data networks. According to the EDRD, mobile and fixed operators in all 27 EU member countries should have a data retention solution in place by September 15, 2007.

EDRD, which the EU issued in March 2006, mandates the retention of voice call and Internet traffic related data in all 27 member countries, to be used in cases of serious crimes, including terrorism. The directive includes the retention of data from mobile phones, Internet and fixed telephony, Internet access and e-mail. Any affected party needs to retain essential information about these communications. According to the directive, data must be retained for a period of time between six months and two years, but some member states have chosen to extend that period to up to five years.

The Directive requires Member States to ensure that communications providers must retain necessary data as specified in the Directive:

1. to trace and identify the source of a communication;
   
2. to trace and identify the destination of a communication;
   
3. to identify the date, time and duration of a communication;
   
4. to identify the type of communication;
   
5. to identify the communication device;
   
6. to identify the location of mobile communication equipment.

"This EU directive is very problematic and costly to implement from an operator's point of view. Consider for example the wide variety of sources of data, and volumes involved. This is why Comptel's expertise in telecom data collection, and Sun's hardware and software expertise are the perfect combination to solve this problem quickly and cost-effectively for operators," says Markku Penttinen, EVP of Convergent Mediation for Comptel Corporation.

Comptel's field-proven and market-leading mediation software is used to collect and process the call data from the various networks. Comptel's software runs on Sun Fire servers, running the Solaris 10 OS, the most advanced OS on the planet. The data itself is stored to a low-cost database, which removes the need for any expensive 3rd party licenses. The stored data is compressed automatically using the Solaris ZFS file system. Sun StorageTek storage systems take care of the physical storing of the data during the retention years. Comptel's state-of-the-art software has off-the-shelf features covering auditing, user profiles and other security requirements for the comprehensive data retention solution.

Want to learn more? Contact us.

Thursday February 15, 2007

NAVTEQ announced the European winners of the NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge at the 3GSM World Congress on tuesday, Feb 13. The challenge is designed to stimulate the Location Based Services industry (LBS) by encouraging application developers from around the world to build innovative location-based service applications that work with portable devices using wireless technology and NAVTEQ maps.

Over 340 companies registered for the Challenge globally, of which nine semifinalists advanced to the final judging in Barcelona, Spain. The semifinalists represented a broad spectrum of wireless applications in three categories: Navigation, Business Applications, and Social Networking. Semifinalists were selected based on each competitor's commercial feasibility, functionality and design.

The grand-prize winner and Navigation Category Winner, Jentro Technologies GmbH - at the picture you can see my friend Erno Hempel, CTO of Jentro, received euro 35,000 in cash and euro 100,000 worth of NAVTEQ Map licenses for up to one year. Jentro's application, activepilot, is a location-based, end-to-end service offering local search, community tools, e911, and off-board navigation. This versatile product meets the needs of the mass market, and also acts as a sensor for generating traffic flow information through its users via its exclusive Floating Car Data technology.

Each category winner, excluding the Grand Prize Winner, will receive euro 5,000 in cash and euro 75,000 worth of NAVTEQ Map licenses for up to one year. Nice prize! Congratulations to all but especially to Jentro who got 2 prizes in one contest.

It's great to see that Jentro is so successful with their Java powered mobile phone offboard Navigation service - they just signed a contract with Motorola around their solution ActivePilot and are working since years with Falk, Mobilkom and many others. Jentro is working since years together with Sun - I will never forget my first project with them about a converged services showcase in 2000 called Daypath (that's why I joined Sun) and a crazy one in 2003 around a jet-engine powered kickboard (codename KickJet).

Tuesday February 13, 2007

The Sun Open Telecommunications Platform (Sun OTP) is the result of a collaborative effort from Sun and members of the Telecommunications Platform Initiative (TPI) that have come together to develop the requirements for a standardized, integrated telecommunications platform to simplify technology integration by enabling design, development and supply chain efficiencies.

Recognizing that technology integration is a common challenge for all Network Equipment Providers (NEPs), the TPI aims to create and foster telecommunications industry collaboration and establish best in class architecture and definition of an integrated platform.

By coming together to define industry platform requirements, NEPs can focus their resources on their core business and not on the underlying base platform. Although important, the base platform is not a primary point of differentiation for NEPs. Instead, the value is in the applications that NEPs build on top of Sun OTP.

As a result of this collaboration, Sun developed Sun OTP as a uniform foundation to help simplify technology integration by enabling design, development, and supply chain efficiencies. Requirements for Sun OTP are therefore, 100% TPI driven.

What is Sun OTP
Sun OTP is a Carrier Grade solution for NEP application development, deployment and hosting that leverages commercial off-the-shelf components.

Sun OTP delivers a fully integrated software stack with full software support and end-to-end Life-Cycle Management services for the life of the solution, as a single product offering. Sun OTP enables NEPs to re-invest their valuable R&D resources in the development of value-added applications and services that matter most to them.

The diagram above shows a graphical representation of the Sun OTP high level conceptual architecture. The basic building blocks of Sun OTP are shown in dark blue while the top portion called "OEM Value Added Services" represents the NEP value added applications.

Sun OTP building blocks include the HA middleware and the application and platform management software, operating in a Solaris 10 environment and pre-tested and qualified on a specific set of hardware.

Optional Application Middleware services will also be available, referred to as expansion packs, that may include application services, SAF, or realtime application services.

Life-Cycle Management

Life-Cycle Management (LCM) provides the methodology for end-to-end management of the service life-cycle, from initial design support to service retirement. LCM ensures continued reliability throughout the entire life of the services in a manner that is relevant to NEPs.

LCM includes service design support, sustaining activities, an extended cycle for bug-fixes, committed release schedules, platform-wide patch releases, and a single point of contact for issue resolution.

In addition, LCM provides a significant opportunity for NEPs to reduce their Total Cost of Ownership due to economies of scale and amortization of LCM costs over higher volumes.

Monday February 12, 2007

The 3GSM World Congress combines the world's largest exhibition for the mobile industry with a cutting edge congress featuring the most prominent Chief Executives representing mobile operators, vendors and content owners from across the world. And so is Sun again here and will present the most actual products and solutions.

Personally I'm facing around 25 meetings - in less than 4 days. Looking forward to meet many people again which I haven't seen for months and sometimes for an year. 3GSM is great to stay in touch and give update. And wednesday evening we'll have our customer and partner party. And this will be a great event again!

Wednesday February 07, 2007

By integrating state of the art server and storage technologies, the Sun Fire X4500 Server (aka Thumper) delivers the remarkable performance of a four-way x64 server and the highest storage density available, with 24 TB in 4U of rack space. This system also delivers incredibly high data throughput for about half the cost of traditional solutions.

Now some german colleagues presented how developers can built their own Thumper system with a notebook, some USB hubs and a dozen USB sticks. Key is the usage of Solaris 10. I'm so sorry that you will not understand it if you don't speak german at all - but you HAVE to have at least a look at the movie in CSI-Munich style...

The best version can be found here but if you want, you can download it as well (MPEG4/H.264 - 142MB).

Rolf Kersten writes in his blog how they did it.

Have fun!

Monday February 05, 2007

Siemens Automation and Drives (A&D) will be presenting its AySystem for the first time at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona from February 12-15, 2007. Usable worldwide, this GSM/GPRS solution consists of the Ay terminal as the basis communication device and AyPilot.com portal, a web interface which can be used for centralized security and monitoring applications as well as for configuring and monitoring the basis devices. Based on Java technology, the system is suitable both for mobile applications in the private sphere and for companies who want to protect their employees and monitor objects.

Three sensors are integrated in the Ay device for detecting temperature, volume and motion. If a predefined sensor threshold is exceeded, an alert is triggered via the GSM/GPRS mobile radio network. The system settings can be entered and adjusted remotely via the web interface. In the same way, the measured values of the sensors can be read, displayed, analyzed and integrated into customer specific applications. The Ay device is the same size as a stack of playing cards and is fitted with four touch-sensitive function keys, a large display which can be used as a button and a loudspeaker which functions as a siren as well. The user only has to press the button to trigger emergency calls in the form of a telephone call or an SMS. Another important feature is the two-way communication function that can be used for telephone calls or sending and receiving SMS messages. The device functions can be set as required via the AyPilot.com web interface. The only requirement is access to the Internet. As an alternative, the configuration can be done by the user on the device itself using the function keys and the display to enter settings directly. For professional applications, the device is preferably configured and remotely controlled from a central location, so that configuration by the user is not necessary.

For customized solutions, the modular-design device can be easily supplemented with AySnapOn expansion modules and programmed by means of Java technology. A GPS module, for example, can be used for locating people and objects and a camera can be added for extending the security functions. The web interface, AyPilot.com, can easily be adapted to the requirements of companies that themselves have wireless communication components and are looking for a server solution for their own individual applications.

The list of potential AySystem applications is almost endless. Thanks to the intuitive, easy-to-use display and the function keys, the Ay user can trigger special actions via mobile radio quickly and easily. There are applications suitable for children and people with infirmities, as well as for security guards and field personnel. In addition, the three integrated sensors for temperature, volume and movement enable a wide range of uses, from individual object monitoring to the management of entire vehicle fleets. Thanks to its open interfaces, the AySystem accelerates time-to-market and requires only low initial investment overhead for the mobile radio operator or business customer. Moreover, the system is scalable both in terms of the hardware, due to the snap-on concept, and as regards software in the form of a Java client-server solution. It can grow as requirements increase.

Thursday January 25, 2007

The Open Content Delivery Server (OpenCDS) is a free, open source platform that enables mobile operators, service providers, and enterprises to deliver a variety of content to mobile users. OpenCDS provides service providers with a way to control the complete content life cycle and helps them to increase Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) and customer loyalty. OpenCDS can support content types such as ring tones, images and wallpapers, Symbian applications, Java technology-based games, audio and video content, and many other content types.

OpenCDS is the open source version of the Sun Java System Content Delivery Server and will be available under and governed by the Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL)..

Built on a Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) architecture, OpenCDS offers carrier-class performance and scalability as well. Check out the developer site, download the binary or the code, and learn how OpenCDS can be useful to you. A Wiki helps you to start...

In my opinion this is really a great news as by sharing CDS with the open source community, Sun will expand the CDS footprint to a wider market. Increased ubiquity for CDS means more systems integrators, original equipment manufacturers and independent software vendors will engage on the CDS platform, increasing the available options.

Sun also recently announced new CDS customers Telecom New Zealand and Telefonica Moviles de Argentina have chosen the Sun CDS solutions running on the Sun Solaris operating system to quickly bring new services and content to market.

Monday December 11, 2006

CNBC interviewed Darrell Jordan-Smith, Sun's VP Global Communications Industry at ITU in Hong Kong last week. In a nutshell Darrell Jordan-Smith stressed three main topics: Where will the the next Billion Java devices come from? What is the Participation age? And what is our position about User Generated Content?

Please see more:

Actually finding myself dancing at YouTube I understand fully, what participation age and user generated content means: There's always someone having a camera and an internet connection...

Watch this incredible stunt done by Robert Gallup, a master illusionist and and death-defying escapologist, a crane, chains, and a deadly clicking clock... He was our highlight this night at our ITU customer party at the Peak in Hong Kong, Dec 5th 2006.

Incredible show - amazing party...

Friday December 08, 2006

Just found myself and two other dear colleagues dancing like rockstars at our customer party. I found it so funny that I'd like to share it with you.

Friday November 03, 2006

As already mentioned in an other entry lab.30, a media festival has started yesterday in my hometown Augsburg / Germany. Actually the exhibition IS much better than the last years and it has some real cool exponents...

Exhibition: To see, hear and feel.
For example an installation from Lynn Pook (Berlin/Paris) called "À Fleur de Peau - Audio-taktile Installation für einen Körper" (in english "audio tactile installation for a body"). The interrested visitors are invited to participate and if so they step into a small linnen cubicle and get wrapped with loudspeakers - actually that really looks like a medical bandage, a little bit perhaps like Frankenstein's monster - so that they can feel the music much more than hear it.

Another installation presents so called "printed circuit board objects" (Platinenobjekt) which have a very artistically layout - the subtitle is "Hardware hommage" and yes, that is it. These circuit boards from Ina Keckeis (Berlin) - are they etchings? Are they working small computers? Both. If you touch them they start to make some noises - and as there are many of them they start an own composition. Great.

Wham. Bang.
The concerts are much stranger: E.g. Florian Hecker's electronic noise. Or "Social Sounds", where sounds from allover the world has been merged into one big collage. Or the websounds in the party at the evening... Might be that an additional conference, workshops or a symposium would make sense to explain more of this kind of music. Is it music? Is it noise? Perhaps something between.

Looking forward to the next days...