NEW YORK-Solaris 7, the newly released version of Sun Microsystems Inc.’s operating system, promises to provide wireless carriers improved capabilities for fraud control, data mining, bundled and enhanced services and manpower and computer system utilization.
With its full, 64-bit implementation, Solaris 7 “opens up a very large address space for access to and use of very large data sets (like those containing) subscriber information,” said Paul Tempest-Mitchell, manager of systems engineering for Palo Alto, Calif.-based Sun.
“When (a wireless customer) roams from cell to cell, the phone interrogates the database. In early versions of any operating systems, the 32-bit data space didn’t have enough room for all the information, so (the 64-bit implementation) will help improve security and reduce fraud.”
Tempest-Mitchell stressed that all Solaris programs are binary compatible, so earlier, 32-bit versions “will function fully with Solaris 7 and actually run faster than before.” Solaris operating systems are designed to run on Sun’s Sparc microprocessors and on Intel Corp. servers.
Solaris 7 also will enhance the ability of wireless carriers to store, access and manipulate various sets of data, he said.
Monitoring customer usage patterns “helps you profile your network” to determine areas and times of high and low usage, said Tempest-Mitchell. Beyond that, access to outside databases can identify individual customer preferences. Carriers can use that information to cross-sell value-added services, which enhances revenues and improves subscriber loyalty.
“We see carriers as being deliverers of every kind of data to end users. For example, a provider could run the financial accounting system of a business customer so that [the customer’s] field workers would have access to it,” Tempest-Mitchell explained.
To do that, however, carriers need the capabilities that a 64-bit data space affords in order to use Internet addresses with words totaling more than 32 characters, or bits.
“As we move to a network age, everything needs an address, often more than 32 bits. Without this (64-bit data space capability), you have to house all the information locally,” continued Tempest-Mitchell.
In Sun Microsystems’ vision of the network as the computer, a 64-bit data space capability also would permit customer-service and other employees to easily access various databases. This would avert the inaccessibility problems created by the incompatibilities of legacy systems with newer systems.
Bundled telecommunications services offerings also require enhanced facilities for divergent databases to interact with each other. Here, too, Solaris 7 can help, according to Sun.
“Certainly, our whole platform of system and software will facilitate converged wireless and wireline, [electronic] mail and [voice] mail and unified messaging,” Tempest-Mitchell said.
Within the offices of a telecommunications carrier, Solaris 7 also will permit more efficient use of computer and human resources, especially at peak demand times.
“It allows dynamic reconfiguration of components within the system, so you can run two conflicting databases on the same system and even translate them to meld them into one system,” he said.
