Nokia and IBM Corp. are combining their expertise to provide service providers with a complete solution for mobile content and applications management and delivery.
The vendors’ joint Digital Media for Mobile Devices (DM Mobile) solution combines the Nokia Delivery Server with IBM’s Digital Media Factory framework and is designed to enable service providers to offer new content services for mobile users, such as Java-based mobile games, polyphonic MIDI ring tones, digital images, graphics, screen savers and icons.
The companies have also agreed to collaborate on secure content delivery solutions, including digital rights management, based on industry-wide open standards and specifications. Nokia and IBM say they’ll use a modular approach to build future support for delivery and protection of a richer set of media types, representing a growing set of options for leveraging initial investments to increase service provider revenue streams.
As part of the agreement, IBM will market Nokia’s Delivery Server software for mobile content downloading. Nokia Delivery Server will become part of IBM’s Digital Media Factory framework, which helps companies create, store, manage and distribute digital content across the digital media value chain utilizing multiple IBM core products and business partners. IBM Global Services will sell and support the resulting offering with consulting, installation, and integration.
The Nokia Delivery Server software is to be ported and made available for use on IBM Linux-based xSeries eServer systems and also will be integrated with IBM’s Service Provider Delivery Environment (SPDE – pronounced “speed-ee”), an open standards based framework built on IBM’s WebSphere e-business infrastructure software. SPEDE is designed to give wireline and wireless service providers the flexibility to introduce new revenue generating voice, text and Internet-based services to their customers faster, easier and at a lower cost. Finally, the combined IBM/Nokia Download Server solution will be supported and demonstrated by the IBM Network Integration Laboratory in La Gaude, France, as a specific solution that is integrated with the IBM SPDE and Digital Media Factory frameworks.
Both Nokia and IBM are members of the newly formed Open Mobile Alliance (OMA), a nearly 200-member company organization charged with delivering open standards for the mobile industry, helping to create interoperable services which work across countries, operators and mobile terminals and are tailored for user’s needs.
