Technology

Design Goals

The Mobile for Good technology platform is designed to enable franchisees to deploy it in different parts of the world and to operate along with the service providers in their respective countries. It is a carrier grade platform; the same as the one used by Airtel-India's largest operator. It uses the short message service (SMS) as the primary channel for communication and content exchange. Whilst providing SMS services is the key, the platform is capable of supporting other related content technologies such as multimedia messaging and content can also be exchanged in binary format.

Convergence of email and SMS technologies forms an integral part of the solution. In this effect users are able to have two-way communication with the system. Message transmission can originate at mobile phones and terminate at a software application and it can, similarly, originate at an application and terminate at mobile phone.

As the application is able to be deployed in multiple locations and the provision of technologies varies between the mobile telecom service providers, the platform enables integration with their systems using standard protocols. This minimises dependencies on service providers and proprietary software applications.

Taking into account the technology deployments in the developing countries, the application is modular with a core application to support key functionalities. Additional modules can be plugged in according to the user requirements.

Each deployment of the application is independent from the others and it will be administered separately.

Application Platform

The application platform consists of three clearly identified layers:

Core application

It implements the SMS functionality and control and manages message flow between other two layers.

Interface modules

These offer API support and interface to other application using standard protocols. SMPP, UCP/EMI and CIMD2 are the main protocols considered to have integration with SMS gateways and messaging centres. WAP, HTTP and SOAP are supported for integrating web applications and web services.

Functional modules

These are specific applications to satisfy the functional requirements. In addition to the key functional modules such as content management and user management, the rest are treated as additional modules and can be deployed as and when required.

Features

SMS2EMAIL

EMAIL2SMS

Content management system as main functional module

Web interface for administration

Support for standard communication protocols

Strong backend support

Integration with other applications

To know more about the technology used for this project, contact the Software Architect Gopal Gobiratnam by emailing gopal.gobiratnam[@]oneworld.net.