6.3 SERVICE DELIVERY PLATFORMS

Let us list just a few of the challenges (there are a lot more) common to building any mobile application:

  • Handling different devices types
  • Coping with legacy devices
  • Handling a huge user base with different account schemes, possibly with each scheme customisable by the user themselves
  • Dealing with disparate data feeds including a mixture of content types, like pictures, ringtones, audio files and video clips
  • Transforming data feeds to formats appropriate to our service needs
  • Formatting user data to be appropriate for display on their device and according to their circumstances
  • Keeping track of users usage patterns and preferences
  • Providing current location information to enhance any mobile application that needs location enabling
  • Providing a unified and openly accessible means for an application to charge the user
  • Providing a means for pricing information and schemes to be kept current and to be automatically reflected in prices sent to users and added to their bills
  • Providing payment mechanisms for users to engage in various commercial transactions
  • Enabling users to be added to the system (and removed when necessary)
  • Providing discovery mechanisms so that mobile services can be discovered and subscribed to by users

This list of potentially common requirements leads us generally to the idea of building a mobile SDP that has the capabilities to provide a lot of these infrastructural assets without having to explicitly include them (program them) ...

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