Jataayu bets on IM, boosts portfolio

BANGALORE: Instant Messaging (IM) is a strong growth area, according to Jataayu Software, a leading mobile VAS infrastructure and terminal solutions provider.

With the emergence of technologies such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), Instant messaging services have evolved from the simple exchange of text-based messages into a richer set of services that include multimedia features, such as voice chat and video conferences. File sharing, online games and chat groups are common features provided by the main IM service providers.

Jataayu believes Mobile Instant Messaging coupled with Presence services may be the key service of the future.

The company recently launched the beta version of its instant messaging and presence services (IMPS) platform, based on the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) IMPS ver1.2 specifications.

The client-server protocol (CSP) provides presence-enabled or IM clients access to instant messaging and presence services servers. Server-server protocol (SSP) provides the communication and interaction means among the different instant messaging and presence services domains or different service providers.

Given the current low penetration of IMPS-capable handsets, the company believes this will provide a good platform for IMPS handset makers and IMPS client-server vendors to further testing for interoperability.

Dr. V Gopalakrishna, director-technology, Jataayu Software, said: "Today, IM is driven by a different model - the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) standard. Leading players such as Yahoo and MSN find the need to open it out to their users. Over the next eight to 10 months, many handsets will have the IM feature as a default setting, which will push cellular operators to scale up to provide the back-end. It may turn out to be a major revenue earner in future for them."

He believes that once the OMA standard comes into place, there will be more handsets with IM features and that prices will eventually drop down to the US $100 range.

Jataayu has identified "Streaming " as an important area for the future. "Changing standards will enforce compliance, and result in richer applications and content such as video streaming," Gopalakrishna said. The company intends to work on adopting popular clients/server (from the internet domain) to wireless/telecom scenario, in the near future.

Currently, Jataayu is developing an OMA complaint Device Management (DM) Client for mobile handsets. The future plans of Jataayu include development of DM server.

It has developed a thin -client architecture, which facilitates running applications like WAP Browser and MMS client, on handsets with limited power and memory.

In this scenerio, part of the client software runs on server at the operator end. Only a thin client with small memory foot print, resides on the handset facilitating communication between the thin client and client part of the software running at the operator's end. However, the client generally supports all the features provided by a normal client.

In other words, it would enable cellular operators to remotely manage its customers' handheld devices. "The operator will be able to remotely configure the device without the user's knowledge. Using over-the-air (OTA) FOTA technology, if a user's device crashes, the new version can be updated remotely," said Gopalakrisna. They need to popularise IM usage initially through innovative business/billing models, he added. Jataayu is currently working on a billing interface for an Indian operator, he added.

Jataayu believes that two years down the line, IM servers would be used by enterprises for their exclusive community usage. "Enterprises with large field staff would benefit largely from this DM server. To start with, telecom operators will use it. However, as applications evolve, the DM server will move to the enterprise," said Gopalkrishna.

Companies that use sales processing applications extensively, such as in the logistics industry, could benefit in a major way from this product.

However, before IM takes off in India some of the challenges to be addressed are availability of handsets supporting OMA Standard IM Client (GSM/CDMA); development of communities (like Yahoo!, AOL, IM Communities in the Internet world) across all major operators; interoperability agreements between operators.