iConverse today announced that two leading eBusiness Solution Providers, mynetsales.com and smartshop.com, have selected iConverse Studio (TM) to bring their applications to wireless devices and allow customers effective access to eBusiness anytime. In addition, iConverse is announcing the first complete platform and hosted environment solution for quickly and easily delivering enterprise-strength mobile eBusiness applications. The iConverse Studio enables developers of any skill to simultaneously and visually create applications that are customized for any individual wireless device. iConverse has also been selected by Gartner Group to showcase its Studio suite at Gartner's Fall Symposium/ITxpo October 17-19 in Orlando, Fla.
"Companies currently providing e-commerce over the web must transition to p-commerce (pervasive-commerce) companies over the next 12-18 months," said Jack Gold, vice president, pervasive computing with META Group. "This means a transition from focusing on HTML browsers on PC platforms, to focusing on multi-model interfaces and delivery. Such a paradigm shift will require a move to architectures, tools and technologies, such as those offered by iConverse, that support rapid application development and deployment on a wide array of devices and interfaces."
The iConverse suite goes well beyond available wireless development solutions that only offer transcoding or translation of Web applications--strategies that convert the application for mobile devices, but do not optimize the application for each device. With the iConverse Studio, companies can quickly deliver business applications that utilize the full capabilities of each device to deliver the richest possible user experience. A soon-to-be-released version of the iConverse Studio will add support for development of speech applications and the combination of voice in/data out applications.
"By partnering with iConverse we have achieved two primary objectives: a robust and flexible solution to delivering our service through wireless devices, and secondly, the beginning of an exciting collaboration of ideas and technologies with a company that has already established the key relationships within the wireless device community that are needed for success," said Tim Musgrove, CTO and COO of smartshop.com, a provider of comparison shopping infrastructure to Internet content sites. "With iConverse's development platform and hosting service, we are able to bring shopping literally into the hands of consumers and enhance the buying experience through customized content layout for each device. Consumers can browse, research, and compare prices for shopping items from any mobile phone or wireless PDA device."
The iConverse Studio
The iConverse Studio consists of the iConverse Parallel Publisher(TM), a visual development environment, and the iConverse Content Connector, a visual integration utility for incorporating a company's existing business logic. Key features of the iConverse Studio include:
-- Parallel Publishing - With iConverse's parallel publishing
technology, developers of any skill can easily create many
customized and complex wireless business applications all at
once, improving time-to-market and shortening the development
cycle. While other market solutions deliver lowest common
denominator applications that are ineffective over time, the
iConverse Studio quickly allows mobile eBusiness applications
to have the richest possible wireless device interfaces and
deliver the most significant user experience.
-- Visual Development -- The iConverse Studio is the only
platform that includes a visual drag and drop interface for
all phases of development: content selection, business logic
and layout design, dramatically reducing the complexity of
building wireless applications and enabling any developer to
become a wireless developer. By deploying layout simulators
for each wireless device, developers can visualize and
customize the look and feel of an application on each wireless
device at design time complete with actual application data.
Other solutions on the market only allow a developer to view
an application on the device at runtime, requiring the
developer to re-start the development process in order to make
any changes.
-- Device Class Management - Through iConverse's hierarchical
classification of devices and unprecedented detailing of
device characteristics, developers can customize their
application for a class of devices or optimize the application
for any individual device. New devices added to the hierarchy
are immediately accessible, inheriting the developer's
previous customization efforts for that class.
-- Application Flexibility and Control - The iConverse platform
can interface with a customer's existing Web site content or
extend their existing application business logic allowing
companies to retain control and flexibility over their
wireless solution and maximize long-term cost of ownership.
iConverse Studio utilizes a visual drag and drop paradigm to
allow customers to access a number of data sources including
XML, COM, EJB, SQL, HTML, LDAP, and others. Customers have the
ability to make real-time changes to application content
without breaking their wireless applications. Developers can
rely on the industry's most open platform to view, add to or
edit all generated software, ensuring complete flexibility
over the final result.
"Many of our customers find that having access to their account information on the road is a tremendous benefit," said Michael J. Doyle, chairman and CEO at mynetsales.com, a provider of web-based sales management solutions. "With iConverse, we are able to offer our customers wireless access to their critical sales information, in real-time time, regardless of geographic location, via their preferred mobile device."
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