Tuesday, August 17, 2010Just to show 2 new demos using the Google API's not in web but as a RCS contact instant messaging. Using the Solaiemes RCS Solution Gateway API and the service API (the Google ones in these cases) you may create compelling use cases and test them in a couple of hours.
Google Weather via RCS
Google Currency Converter via RCS
texting rocks !!!
solaiemes team :-)
Monday, August 9, 2010
How many calls did you make today? How many texts did you send? And tweets, Skype chats, IM chats…?
More and more often, making a voice call is no longer the first option when we want to quickly contact somebody. It is not a subjective feeling, market research reports by Nielsen[1] & [2] that the trend is there: SMS numbers are raising, voice call usage is going down across all age groups, although for young generations the contrast is even steeper.
Together with the dominance in the desktop of the various instant communication systems (Skype, MSN, Yahoo, GTalk, etc.), the picture is clear: textual communication is the preferred option for quick communication.
Reasons for that are varied; it is not only the price difference between sending a SMS and making a voice call. For many users, the cost difference is not an issue. And, after all, fixed voice minutes are almost free. There are other reasons: a voice call means a time and attention commitment that many are unwilling to warrant unless agreed beforehand; calls do not allow multitasking (is the other party in autopilot, just repeating “ok”? he is probably checking the email or correcting a report); even for the most impersonal calls, carries the risk of an emotional bound with the other party... Many people prefer messaging, asynchronous and impersonal, especially for services whose impersonality are taken for granted, like those that are now carried out in call centres. And young generations take messaging for granted, voice is not even an option for many of them.
Paradoxically this means voice is regaining the status as the really personal medium. Or perhaps not so paradoxically after all, hand written letters are the summit of communication commitment, there are so few people handwriting nowadays. It is just the “mechanic” or “robotic” voice calls that are being replaced.
Our view (shared with other companies, i.e: see this Voxeo ppt) is that real time messaging is the best communication medium for impersonal communication services and, properly developed, will create a huge opportunity for a new ecosystem of text-based services.
RCS messaging enablers, session based and with built-in multimedia support, unlock possibilities beyond SMS and basic IM, until now restricted to users with a given software or client. RCS will, however, be available across handset ranges and on the desktop, opening a truly mass market, interconnected across service providers.
In the next posts, we will uncover a few demo services showcasing the power of RCS to deliver useful and revenue generating services.
Just a basic RCS client and the RCS R2 specs, unmodified core, unmodified clients. And lots of ideas!!!
Jose Recio
Wednesday, August 4, 2010Hi, see how easy is accessing to the well known internet services using RCS. In this demo we created a simple code to combine Google Translate API with our RCS Solution Gateway API, and voilà, one of the RCS phonebook become a translator.
With this approach, texting becomes an alternative to apps and browsing to access to services and from the point of view of the ecosystem, using RCS contacts as "services gate" services can get a bigger adoption. Also, when users will be costumed to interact with the services by "texting", new use cases will mean just adding new contacts to your phonebook, and no need to install or learn new apps. We are working hard to provide a suitable and more usable alternative to apps/browsing to communicate with the services, stay tunned, more demos coming soon :-)
Tuesday, July 27, 2010In order to "visualize" all the possibilities of Rich Communication Suite to create a new way of communication and interacting with services we just shot this demo. Combining Android native features as the TTS (text to speech) with our client, even when in background, RCS instant messages received are played as voice, becoming an interesting way to create services based on voice alerts with the advantadge of not needing to transport media and access using a common enabler, the RCS Client.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Jose Recio, one of the Solaiemes co-founders have been asked by IMTC about our vision and approach on/to RCS (Rich Communication Suite) and the future of mobile and posted the answers in their blog.
The International Multimedia Telecommunications Consortium (IMTC) is a global consortium of companies dedicated to the advancement of open standards and multimedia communications through our Activity Group initiatives and annual events that include interoperability forums and workshops. We are pleased to realize that IMTC is listening not only the big brands of the industry, but the communication technology start-ups as we are at this stage. Thanks.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
During the last months we were quite quiet blogging, sorry, we were fully focused in speeding up our RCS/IMS portfolio, interoperating with IMS core vendors, and trying to present our vision in different trade shows and conferences (MWC2010, IMTC2025, MOBIP).
We have had nice feedback about our vision and how carriers still have the chance of keep a leading role in the enhanced messaging and communication space and avoide the final sentence to be mere dumb pipe :-)
Now, we have packaged 2 concept trials to enhance RCS offer targetting carriers trialing RCS and the ones planning to deploy the service with 2 main goals.
a) showcasing the possibilities of creating non-intrusive services on top of RCS using API's, and allowing to create different use cases as mobile banking or social networking sharing the same using experience, the RCS client.
b) showcasing how RCS can be applied also as communicator in the TV, STB or embedded in a website making feasible a real convergence and a seamless communication experience.
We believe it is better rely on local partners the approach to the carriers and we are eager to partner with telecom focused integrators and IMS core suppliers without this application layer currently working with carriers in France, Benelux and Scandinavia, and also Italy :-), to help them to take the most from previous IMS investments.
looking to hear about you !!!
Monday, June 14, 2010
Solaiemes attended las week the first edition of Mobile Services Innovation Platform (MOBIP) event was held in Valencia, Spain. MOBIP is a Partnership and Investment Forum for Mobile Services.
Valencia became a meeting point for SMEs, professional experts, corporate partners and venture capital investors that were interested in knowledge-sharing on strategic information, market opportunities and new business trends for the Value-Added Services in the Mobile Industry.
The aim of the Partnership and Investment Forum is to foster the competitiveness of high-growth ventures in the mobile services sector and to strengthen their opportunities for market access both within Europe and in wider international markets. The focus of these projects is on access to finance, internationalization and business to business collaboration.
Solaiemes was selected by MOBIP to present our company project to an audience of industry experts and investors. After that, we had the opportunity to meet one2one with some of the industry experts and investors to further discuss. This will help us to expand collaboration and connect with investment players. The experience was very positive, and it confirms that "mobile" is now boosting, this is the moment.
This is the first edition of the MOBIP Forum and more are coming soon across Europe, so get ready for next opportunities to create connections between the investor community and start-ups in the Mobile sector.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010Hi,
Following the last post with the ppt you can find now the video with Jose Recio panel explanations. "Triple Play in the Living Room" during IMTC 2025 virtual forum. Jose explained how RCS light clients based on cloud platform + simple widget at TV or STB can help to make feasible standard communications fully convergent.
We shared the panel with Manuel Vexler by Huawei and moderated by Anatoli Levine from Radvision. Find the post in the oficial IMTC blog here
Friday, April 30, 2010Find the slides Jose Recio presented in the IMTC 2025 Forum in the Panel "Triple Play in the Living room" shared with Manuel Vexler (Huawei) and Anatoli Levine (Radvision).
Our point was about with light clients based on current TV widgets or STB frameworks are enough to build more complete communicators based on Rich Communication Suite, keeping the "complexity in a shared cloud based platform".
Monday, April 19, 2010
Next week I will be at IMS 2.0 World Forum 2010 in Barcelona and will participate in a panel "How to boost IMS applications" on 29th, April.
We are happy to be there and have the chance of explaining a demo-ing how Rich Communication Suite (RCS) could be the killer app based on IMS and not only "app" but "solutions enabler".
The IMS 2.0 forum is also a chance to be in touch technology and service development representatives from main suppliers and carriers and meet new leads.
This is our second year there as speakers, and it seems finally this year the IMS community will be more optimistical, as RCS is taking off with some important trials, being interoperated with different carriers. Finally carriers are understanding the role of IMS, and also they should work together to offer a "solution" mass market model (as SMS in the past) against the "app" model, not able to arrive to the masses.
juan
Thursday, March 25, 2010
User-to-network interface or UNI is just a fancy term for naming the procedures and protocols that communication tools in the user hands (phones, mobiles, soft-phones, IM clients …) use to do their work and establish communicate with the network.
In the pre-Internet circuit based communication world, user devices were very simple, as simple and dumb as possible. Intelligence was supposed to be in the network. UNI capabilities were very limited, as corresponds to a very stable and limited service offer.
Internet turned upside down that approach: the “End to end principle” (https://www1.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1958.txt) translates roughly into “dumb network – smart endpoints”. It is assumed in the Internet that intelligence in the endpoints, and not in the network, that has a very important, but limited role: moving packets as efficiently as possible. Services are deployed in the endpoints, without relying on specific network behaviour. The UNI actually defines the services.
Telco core design (and a good chunk of the business) is based on the “smart network” view. The advent of IP based services thus supposed a revolution, and IMS was designed to mix both approaches: access and core assume the role of the “dumb network” efficiently moving IP packets, whereas the smart endpoints are the IMS, the application servers and the user mobile.
As in the Internet, in IMS the UNI comprises and defines the services. There is little difference between the UNI (client-IMS) and the ICS (app. Server-IMS) interfaces. One example is RCS: a rich, complete UNI that allows to perform all sort of service invocations and combine them with quite a lot of freedom.
Landing from these disquisitions to earthly matters: given that the UNI comprises the services, it is complete, stable, tested …. Wouldn’t make sense to extend the ideas explained above and use it also for communicating with the external, non-RCS world? We propose to use the RCS UNI to communicate web services, enterprise systems, and social networks with RCS.
Obviously the carrier is keeping a role, it's providing a valuable common enabler with its core, and assuring interoperability with other carriers & service roaming, security, and at the same time making easy for the ecosystem create mass market possible adoption for their solutions. WIN-WIN.
Why reinvent the wheel? Why spend money and time on designing new services interfaces when the UNI is there and contains the full service capabilities? Surely it is the better starting point.
Jose Recio
Monday, March 1, 2010
After "evangelizing" posts about RCS technology, own product portfolio explanation and demos, and finally, last week reflections on MWC RCS Seminar, we would like to add our view about key factors to make RCS a huge success and a new way of conceive mobility & unified communications.
The key advantadge of RCS is a type of "SMS enabler", only 1 experience to be learnt, very different use cases to be available using the service, all carriers, all devices compatible. This is the right way to address to the masses, not only geeks of smartphone owners.
On the other hand, unfortunately we are at the beginning of "all carriers, all devices, lots of services using RCS as door". Carriers start trialing RCS, and luckily with a good approach, including interoperability as part of trials (the 3 top carriers in France and Telefonica and Orange in Spain).
But...to run faster...there are a key few points:
a) Affordable core for small carriers, MVNO's and even servive providers trying to offer RCS using agnostic data connectivity. The good new here comes from Acme Packet, launching their new product Net-Net SIP Multimedia-Xpress
b) All devices. The good news come from Genaker with their J2ME RCS Client to enable the boost of RCS service usage before native clients arrive. (It won the RCS Innovation devChallenge).
c) Lots of services on top. The good news here come from us !!! The Solaiemes RCS Solution Gateway, is designed to create services on top of RCS being "content buddies" with no telco experience, the idea is merge internet & telco space, and our platform enablers the service creation based on APIs, being fully interoperated with telco IMS core to create fully compliant content buddies.
Then, even smaller innovative MVNOs looking to differentiate with compelling services, carriers looking for affordable service testing can save time to validate the service, and give a chance to the ecosystem to think about solutions, as it happened with SMS in the past...
And finally, let us remember how we finish our latest post, because it is the key to understand the battler, apps vs services...Devices apps could be the Ferraris, but the real success is the Ford-T, providing a nice experience everybody can afford in terms of cost & usability.
If you consider this post interesting to be shared, remember you can tweet this post using the button in the upper-left button :-)
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
GSMA organized again a very interesting seminar on RCS as part of the Mobile World Congress GSMA activities. Almost 4 hours packed with experience from trials and vendors and operators heavyweights. It is difficult to say that there is no commitment after listening to the attendants.
I will summarize the most important points on our view, just a schematic, not the full session proceedings.
Telefónica: Stressed the dynamic nature of the future enhanced phonebook, one of the RCS strong points. Advantages of RCS services vs over-the-top: Native and embedded client + Universality + Telco service model.
Japan operators: Very intesting explanation of the timeline. PoC + Presence + IM launched in 2008, limited success due to poor interoperability. Step back and work on agreement under standard organisation umbrella. Now launching IMS based services and integrated with RCS group.
Trial operators: Ongoing and well.
AT&T: Sharing very interesting lessons learnt from SMS slow start and MMS blazing success in the US market: Interoperability between operators is key, it was lacking initially with SMS (and harmed it a lot), carefully worked for MMS (contributed to quick and massive success). GRX is not good enough, RCS interconnectivity should be IPX.
Very important insight from an Asia operator: when RCS service was launched, it didn't canibalize SMS traffic, on the contrary, SMS actually increased !!!. RCS stimulates communication, any kind of communication.
Reportedly, some nostrils perceived the uncertain aroma of doubt in the last part of the seminar, I think it is just another take in the continuous game between vendors (we won't ship until operators commit) and operators (we can't commit unless more units and models are available). Hopefully with RCS a common interest will leave behind this conundrum, as old as the mobile industry (remember the "God send mobiles" joke?).
And finally we want to remark that Solaiemes point of view remains intact. High tier devices apps could be the Ferraris, but the real success is the Ford-T, providing a nice experience everybody can afford in terms of cost & usability. Steve Jobs could be a nice "ferrari" type innovator, but the huge mass market impact should come from carriers (the communication Henry Ford's) if they do not throw the towel :-)
If you consider this post interesting to be shared, remember you can tweet this post using the button in the upper-left button :-)
Monday, February 15, 2010
We were really amazed as appearing listed in a flyer to promote Rich Communication Suite technology with 6 vendors listed as "please ensure the visit to the following...".
We are appearing with other fantastic start-up's, even some of then were start-up's decades ago :-)
Just kidding :-)
Now, seriously, we are glad to see that our product gets some attention, and is complementary to the core IMS and device/desktop client suppliers offering.
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