Java ME Luminary - Allen Lau of Tira Wireless to Demo Multi-Platform Deployment

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Allen Lau, inventor and creator of the Jump Product Suite for Tira Wireless, brings 10 years of technical and management experience to his work. In one of the senior development positions he held at Symantec he oversaw the development teams at the company's Toronto Research and Development facility; in another he spearheaded the design and development of Symantec's WinFax PRO.

Allen is making his third JavaOne presentation in a row in 2006.

Last year, he described the problems that confront developers who want to maximize return on their investment by deploying their content on a wide range of devices across multiple networks. There are hundreds of combinations of platform and network operator, and each may raise problems different from the rest. Just gathering the information you need can be a daunting task.

At JavaOne 2006, Allen will shift his focus from problems to solutions. He will demonstrate a new approach to cross-platform deployment called Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP). "Tira Wireless took an early lead in addressing the challenges posed by device fragmentation and deploying mobile content," Allen says. "We believe that one of our roles in this market is to educate others on the best practices we use, to keep from getting mired in the process."

Allen describes one scenario a developer may need to address: Jeanne downloads a game from carrier X. She loves it, and recommends it to her friend Ron, who's a subscriber of carrier Y. Ron searches Y's portal for Jeanne's game, in vain because it hasn't been adapted to the handset Ron uses. Whether the barrier was cost or time-to-market considerations, a potential sale has been lost and a prospective customer is disappointed.

In his presentation at JavaOne, Allen will describe how to meet needs that arise in a deployment process that typically includes planning, content adaptation, testing and certification, channel packaging, channel submission, and asset management. "It is a very complex process. When you're adapting content to many platforms, using AOP can significantly improve productivity."

Allen and Tira have already faced all these questions during the development of its Jump Product Suite. Allen says Jump "combines in-depth knowledge of mobile content deployment with the most powerful and flexible features of digital asset management and workflow systems." The aim is to make processes more efficient and use resources effectively as you proceed through planning, content adaptation, testing and certification, channel packaging, and channel submission.

According to Allen, Tira chose to base the Jump suite on Java technology because it has the largest market share - citing research firm Ovum's estimate in 2004 of 1.1 billion Java-enabled handsets by the end of 2006. "Market domination is not surprising because the Java programming language is easy to learn, and there are lots of free tools available, such as NetBeans." He says Java technology presents developers with the lowest barrier to entry.

He advises developers to gain a thorough working knowledge of the key concerns that arise in deployment, including:

• Handling differences among the devices proliferating in the mobile market. "Reading a handset manufacturer's specification sheet is not enough; it won't help you understand the nuances that may come into play, such as how the device performs under stress, or bugs and idiosyncrasies." Developers need to know how to modify content to get it to function effectively on each targeted device.
  
  
• Managing variations in testing content and quality control procedures to meet specific requirements imposed by the device and the operator.
  
  
• Ensuring consistency in the deployment process and in the end product, especially where multiple developers may be working on different versions of the same application.
  
  
• Making deployment processes efficient. To ensure their economic survival, publishers must create processes that maximize resources, take full advantage of existing content, and automate as many functions as possible.
  
  
• Managing assets effectively. Throughout the stages of porting and testing, it's essential to know what has been deployed where, and who is in charge of what content when.

Allen says his JavaOne presentation has three key goals. He wants developers to realize that mobile content deployment is much more complex than most people think; that both domain expertise and a flexible approach are critical to success in the mobile market; and that expert help is at hand: "There are software applications available specifically for the mobile market, and these should not be ignored."