By Abraham Joseph, Founder, Device Management Forum

At the Device Management Forum we take the view that although DM service enablers are not an end in and of themselves, they are essential underpinnings for the delivery and support of services delivered via end user devices. Independent of whether the application or service is messaging, entertainment, advertising or payments, there is invariably a need to identify or select populations of devices, configure devices appropriately, upgrade software, firmware and settings on devices and provide help and support to end users.

Many operators including Sprint, Vodafone, Telefonica, T-Mobile and Orange have implemented solutions based on the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) device management (DM) standards, and major device and platform vendors including Nokia, Microsoft and RIM have incorporated support for these standards in their products. 

Increasingly, evidence indicates that these standards are gaining momentum in enterprise markets. Last October, Perlego Systems  announced support for OMA DM.  'We are seeing evidence of the widespread adoption of unified communications on mobile devices and the only way to effectively and efficiently configure these devices is with OMA DM,' said Todd Ostrander, CEO.

Mikael Ostman, Manager of the mobile division of Secode, a managed security services provider is another strong supporter of OMA DM in the enterprise. 'Our customers include financial institutions, government agencies and service providers all of whom are very concerned with security aspects of their operations,' said Ostman. 'Also, enterprises want to have the ability to go online and check what is going on at any time. We found out pretty early that the glue we needed to hold such a system together was OMA DM, and the solution we selected from Capricode provided excellent support for all the third party applications and security measures we needed to implement.' 

B2M Solutions, whose mobile enterprise solution focuses on business process integration and includes supplier management, asset management and application management, in addition to device management, also plans to support OMA DM. 'We intend to use the OMA DM standard to provide support for horizontal applications as part of our 2009 roadmap,' said Julie Purves, Managing Director.

New Requirements for Device Management

Fixed mobile convergence, applications like home networking and new technologies like WiMAX all create the need for additional DM capabilities. There is also a case for making better use of existing capabilities. HP has been a system integrator in a number of tier-one operator implementations of OMA DM.  'We are developing an advanced DM engine to ease the implementation of business logic that exploits DM,' said Olivier Poulain, Manager of DM within HP's Communications Media and Entertainment Division.

Currently, the OMA has parallel work streams for OMA DM 1.3, an enhanced version of OMA DM 1.2.1, and OMA DM 2.0, a second generation of standards that address convergence. 'One of our major focuses is OMA DM 2.0, or converged device management,' said Linyi Tian, Chairman of the OMA DM Working Group and Manager, Application Standards at Huawei. 'The requirements document is scheduled for completion in August 2009 and the review phase is scheduled for completion in October 2009. In addition to the contribution-driven process, we are undertaking offline discussions with a number of key stakeholders to accelerate the requirements capture process.'

In tackling converged device management, one of the key issues OMA addresses is collaboration with other standardization organisations. 'Over the last several months we have sent liaison requests to a number of organisations and invited them to participate in our group meetings. Many have submitted contributions or requirements for inclusion,' said Axel Ferrazzini, who serves as Vice Chair of the OMA DM Working Group, and as a member of the OMA Board of Directors. Ferrazzini is Standards Manager at Research in Motion. 'The organizations we approached include Femto Forum, Broadband Forum, UPNP, Home Gateway Initiative, WiMAX Forum, DMTF, Cable Labs, ETSI SCP, OMTP, 3GPP and 3GPP2.'

Although converged device management is a major focus for many stakeholders, not everyone agrees on how this ought to be achieved.  While some solution vendors report that they are receiving requests from operators for a single management system for all devices, Yves T'Joens, manager digital home and access support systems at Alcatel Lucent said that a number of the operators he speaks with are happy to perform management integration at higher levels. Sicap, a mobile application developer that provides integrated solutions for device and SIM management recently extended the capabilities of its OMA DM system to encompass the management of DSL gateways. 

It is reasonable to assume that as the various stakeholders jostle to position themselves optimally for emerging opportunities, standards making for converged solutions will be anything but dull. Given its head start in mobile technology, the success of its DM standards and its open approach, the OMA is likely to continue to play a key role in the evolution of DM standardization.

Abraham Joseph is the founder of the Device Management Forum.
Additional information on OMA DM as well as other OMA initiatives and their possible links with OMA DM can be found and on the OMA web site and in OMA's 2008 annual report. News archives relating to the deployment of OMA DM solutions can be found at www.devicemanagement.org.

Mobile Broadcast Services (BCAST) Working Group

Enhancing Version 1 Functionality

OMA published its comprehensive Mobile Broadcasting enabler as a Candidate Enabler Release in June 2007 and as an Approved Enabler RELEASE in March 2009, OMA BCAST WG is working on the enhancement of BCAST 1.0 enabler – BCAST 1.1 – that supports user personalization, location enhanced services, secure removable media for content consumption, rich media solution for content presentation, audience measurement for content consumption tracking, and expansion of broadcast distribution platforms. 

Location

1.1 will enable content providers and operators to offer more enhanced location based broadcast services.

Personalization

Individually customized features include personalized service definitions and user defined bundles. BCAST 1.1 supports the delivery of User Generated Content more efficiently.

Enhanced Interactive Service
 
Interactive capabilities will allow operators, content providers and end users to benefit from providing or responding to media documents and delivering or utilizing the service guide over Unicast and Interactive Service.

Enhanced Subscription for Service

End users will be able to pause and resume subscription status, exchange coupons and tokens for content, include parental controls and start times for subscription cycles. 

Roaming Enhancement

OMA BCAST 1.1 has roaming enhancements across service providers. 

Security

Service Protection and Content Protection will be enhanced in terms of Short Term Key Management and Traffic Encryption Key management. 

Addition of Other OMA Enablers to BCAST 1.1

OMA's DM enabler will be efficiently worked with broadcast channel provision by OMA's BCAST enabler and OMA Rich Media Environment will be added to BCAST as one of the solution for Rich Media Presentation. 

Additional Broadcast Distribution Support

1. DVB-SH
2. WiMAX
3. FLO IP

Interoperability Testing Program 

The OMA continuously operates an interoperability program to validate Enabler specifications, as well as the implementations of member products and services.

International Testing Event Beijing, China and Dusseldorf, Germany
 
The OMA's first annual Enhanced Environment Test (EET) event will take place at Vodafone and China Mobile labs in Dusseldorf and Beijing respectively. The event follows the commitment made in 2008 to Real World Testing of Product and Service Implementations of OMA Enablers and is available to ALL OMA Members.
 
In order to understand the value of a real world testing environment, all employees from any member company, as well as the interested public are invited to attend on Wednesday 25th March.  
To register for the public session of the event, please visit:  http://www.register123.com/event/profile/form/index.cfm?PKformID=0x724832de73 

Participating engineers from OMA member companies and the OMA staff will develop product and service demonstrations throughout the test event, which begins on Thursday 19 March. OMA's Board Interoperability (IOP) Committee and IOP Working Group expect to show examples of live roaming scenarios on real world products located in both China and Germany.

Enablers featured at the event for live roaming from both locations include:

• Device Management (DM)
• Digital Rights Management (DRM)

Enablers also being tested in Dusseldorf which OMA will show via live uplink in Beijing include:

• Mobile Broadcast (BCAST)
• Firmware Update Management Object (FUMO)

The event will be held in real time from Beijing and Düsseldorf. Attendees may choose to participate at either location. Registration and refreshments will be offered starting at 0900 local time in Düsseldorf and 1600 local time in Beijing. The demonstrations will begin 30 minutes later, and last approximately 90 minutes. The agenda includes presentations about OMA's IOP Program, the EET event, as well as features and benefits of the Enablers to be demonstrated. Questions will be taken from the audience.

For a complete description of OMA's testing and interoperability programs, please visit http://www.openmobilealliance.org/TestFests/overview.aspx

Events Calendar

Upcoming 2009 Industry Events

• Mobile Marketing Forum with Special Focus on Visual Codes, 28-29 April, Singapore
• Mobile Location Services 2009, 12-13 May, London, UK
• AfricaCom 2009 , 16-18 November, Cape Town, RSA