IT TRENDS
Serving a world that is slowly, inexorably going mobile It trends
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The integration of all forms of electronic messaging has embraced the mobile phone
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— photo: special arrangement
Technology transfer: Microsoft’s Indian engineers have transferred the rich Internet experience of Silverlight technology to mobile phones.
Like Oliver Twist asking for ‘more,’ users of electronic communication technologies can never have enough of a good thing.
The ultimate wishlist is the integration of voice, email, instant messaging, fax, Internet Protocol-based audio and video — even ‘white boarding’, transferring from a written surface — to go into a manthan or churning of techno
logies and techniques.
All on the go
Hitherto much of this has been anchored in fixed systems: PCs, land lines, corporate networks. But peripatetic road warriors have changed rules and priorities: Now IT’s all on the go now and the world’s largest software company cannot afford to be a stationary target in this scenario.
Which is why a few groups at the Microsoft India Development Centre (MSIDC) in Hyderabad, one of the largest development centres of the company outside the U.S., have been quietly chipping away at the challenges that stand in the way of bring Unified Communications (UC) to every mobile phone and portable Internet device.
On Tuesday, which marks MSIDC’s 10th birthday, some of these tomorrow technologies were opened for scrutiny for the first time. Connect, communicate, collaborate, that is UC’s central vision — any place, any device communication.
If I, as a sender, knew whether the person I was trying to reach was at the desk or at home or reachable by a mobile phone, I could choose the best way to get in touch, instead of playing endless email tag, suggests Nagesh Pabbisetty, General Manager of the Business Division at MSIDC.
But customers are no longer satisfied with just reaching people; they want to share their own rich experiences. Which is why engineers in Hyderabad have developed Microsoft’s Office Communicator Version 2 specifically for the mobile phone — and then ported Silverlight, the programmable Web browser for rich internet applications like animation and compelling graphics on to the mobile platform.
Coupled with a fast 3G phone service, it allows users for the first time to enjoy a level of graphics that has hitherto been tethered to the desktop.
Bala Rajagopalan’s team at MSIDC, having Silverlighted the mobile phone, is working with handset makers to reach the ultimate user.
Nokia may be among the first to offer the feature: Microsoft has tweaked it for Nokia’s own S 60 platform as well as for Java which fuels many mobiles.
In other ways too, desktop computing pioneers like Microsoft, are having to adjust to the new reality: for every PC sold, five mobile phones are bought. Other groups at MSIDC, are extended the reach of the Mobile Office from just emails to collaborative tools which will allow enterprises to work on a single document across continents.
How to get over the need to download huge attachments before starting work? Easy; download in parts and start working on part one: If you need to revise slide 25 of a 50 slide presentation, jump to slide 25 and get working.
This is easier said than done — unless clever software makes it happen. But tomorrow it will be standard practice.
Fancy jargon
By the time that happens, we may have increasingly large chunks of our work space, not on hard disk drives or but up in the ‘cloud’ — today’s fancy jargon for the Web.
“We will have to offer increasing numbers of office tools in the Cloud,” says Srini Koppulu, Managing Director MSIDC, “but customers still have some inhibitions about shifting their assets to the Web.”
Free space
Storage might be the thin end of the wedge that drives slowly from desk to cloud: Lay users are increasingly offered gigabytes of free space on the Web and it might be a trend that strengthens the case for moving unified communications to the mobile: You may soon find that your phone is an agni-asthra when it comes to multiple commuunication options; but it is never going to be able to store all your files.
Incubate and innovate
“We came to Hyderabad to incubate and innovate,” says S. Somasegar, Microsoft’s Vice President for the Developer Division who a decade ago persuaded the company to shed a Redmond-centric view of the world — and look to India for ideas.
Today after 10 years, that idea has paid off handsomely as 1500 engineers grapple with the technology challenges of serving a world that is slowly inexorably going mobile.
ANAND PARTHASARATHY
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