Aether Systems Inc. is known for its custom messaging solutions, wirelessly enabling various types of applications for use on messaging devices and handheld computers.
This week, the company is hoping to stake out a piece of the browser-enabled phone market, introducing a new partnership with AlterEgo, which has developed a distributed network of servers.
The result is AirLoom, an HTML to WML repurposing application for enterprise customers and dot-coms looking to wirelessly enable their content to browser-enabled phones. Aether will offer the service as a wireless application service provider.
“We needed to address the browser-based market,” said Evan Deoul, vice president of wireless Internet services at Aether. “We’ve developed a whole strategy around the higher-end wireless Internet … but we wanted to address something that met the first step more simple.”
The AirLoom service primarily is a customer-acquisition tool-a solution that quickly can get customers into the wireless Internet market, with the goal of migrating customers to a custom application over time.
“With AlterEgo, we’re getting clients to market quicker than they could on their own,” Deoul said. “The key message is that any business, be it enterprise customer or dot-com, wants to do something in wireless, but wants to grow and migrate over time. AirLoom has the ability to stick with them and move with them up the food chain.”
He said a custom solution generally takes about six months to develop. AirLoom is offered as the interim solution that can be up and running in two weeks, which customers can use while Aether develops their custom solutions.
“We recognized in the last six months that browser services need to be exploited,” Deoul said. “It’s easier to get customers more quickly with the browser and then migrate them to others. It’s just another way to attack the market.”
Aware of the competition in the wireless ASP market, Aether said it has a few tricks up its sleeve to set itself apart.
Unlike other wireless ASPs, which host solutions at a central server, AirLoom will use AlterEgo’s national distributed network of nine operating centers with some 30 servers at each. Deoul said this distributed-network model is key to differentiating AirLoom from other wireless ASPs.
“By being on multiple servers and routing user requests faster, you’re reducing a lot of the latency. It’s a much higher performance and scalable infrastructure.”
The AlterEgo network is an Internet overlay that performs the necessary repurposing activities and is connected at the other end to Aether’s NOC, which in turn connects to the various wireless networks. AlterEgo configures the content or applications that content providers want delivered wirelessly through its AlterEgo Designer, a suite of adaptation tools. It then creates certain rules by which that content will be delivered to different devices and networks. These rules are sent across the entire AlterEgo network, so any incoming request will be met in the same fashion.
So AlterEgo is not hosting content or applications as it would in a traditional wireless ASP model. Instead, it sets a common standard for how they will look on different devices across different networks. “We’re not rewriting the site in any particular language,” said David Downing, vice president of marketing at AlterEgo. “On the fly, when the device calls in, you know what language to support based on the incoming devices. The rules for this are published throughout the network.”
Because AlterEgo’s network contains so many more servers, each may handle a different task, which Aether said allows less latency and greater refinement of services.
