The Short Names

Motorola’s biggest success to date was when it released the thinnest and sexiest device the world had seen. Since then, the handset-maker has struggled to produce anything like it.

Yesterday, everyone was prepared to see Motorola’s latest form factor that would bring it back from the brink. Instead, what we got was an announcement about an innovative new user interface, or skin, that runs on top of the Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Android operating system. In fact, the big unveiling had little to do with the hardware, and in many ways, the upcoming CLIQ phone looks like any smartphone with a slide-out Qwerty keyboard. The interesting stuff is the Blur technology running under the hood.

This marks a huge cultural shift for the company, which in the past has always been driven by hardware design. While we didn’t get the entire story, the picture we gleaned during yesterday’s announcement and during a hands-on demo showed that much of transformation had to do with new Motorola (NYSE: MOT) management—and leveraging assets the company already had.

When Sanjay Jha was appointed CEO of mobile devices, he fast tracked a project being worked on by former employees from Good Technology, an enterprise email service that Motorola acquired, and then sold off in February. So, while other divisions back in Illinois were slashing staff, the Sunnyvale office was quietly picking up employees from Apple and Google in what has become a long two and a half year process to get to market. Rick Osterloh, Motorola’s VP of Product Development for Android Products, couldn’t help but talk about the project, which had been kept under tight wraps for the past year so well. He said it originated with Jha, who was interested in what the former Good employees were working on. “He liked what he saw and he gave it resources.”

Jha explained the importance of BLUR to GigaOm’s Om Malik at Mobilize and how it compares to Apple’s iPhone and RIM’s BlackBerry. He said the platform melds Apple’s idea of having access to tons of applications with BlackBerry’s niche of integrating the apps—like email—deeply into the phone. Together, they have the apps and the integration: “The iPhone has one, BlackBerry has the other, but we have combined them in a meaningful way for social networking.”

Essentially, the BLUR technology enables users to get all of their messages, status updates and other social networking components pushed to them. Motorola’s director of product marketing Dan Rudolph told me during a demo at San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art that in order to accomplish this, there’s a lot of server-side technologies playing a role. All of the messages are compressed and then sent to the device. The process should help save on bandwidth and battery life, while the consumer will have all the information without having to go out and retrieve it.

Osterloh said the original idea stretches back as far as 2007 when Facebook and MySpace were just taking off. “We had all these people from Good…we thought we could really solve something.” He said the two keys were that messaging services on devices had gotten complicated. (Users had multiple email addresses and also SMS and MMS.) The other thing they looked at was making a consumer-friendly service that would be used by people who didn’t have support from an IT staff at work. “We redid everything. It was focused on business and this is 100 percent focused on the consumer.”

Some of the key services include an online portal, where users could log in and manage their device. If it’s lost, they can ping it and see where it’s located on a map. If it’s been stolen, they can wipe off all of their information and data. Likewise, if you get a new phone, all you would have to do is re-enter a BLUR user name and password and all of the consumer’s settings and preferences would be restored from the wallpaper to which widgets it has on the home screen—a significant time saver. Osterloh: “There was a big hole between what was happening with applications and what was happening with services on the BlackBerry. We see that there’s a need for both…The strategic part is the BLUR part.”

Motorola’s strong software platform may have increased its chances of making a comeback. But form factor is important, too. And, so far, it’s something that’s been neglected on the Google Android platform. To date, most of the devices are bulky, and while some have gotten sleeker, nothing still compares to the iPhone. Motorola’s new CLIQ also falls into this category. While solid and full of the latest hardware, it too is large and strays from Moto’s design background. INQ Mobile’s CEO Frank Meehan announced yesterday that his company was going to start building phones on Google Android’s OS, but pointed to one of the challenges with the platform: “Currently, Android phones on networks that are selling against the iPhone have not performed well. You need to get the experience better.”

So far, Motorola has announced that its first handsets will be sold via T-Mobile in the U.S. and also Orange, Telefonica (NYSE: TEF) and America Movil. How will it do? We’ll have to wait and see.

 

 

 

 

 

            Logica’s messaging hub, FASTWIRE Open, benchmarks at record five million messages per day

Benchmark enables banks to reduce costs and manage business expansion

 

August 28, 2009: Logica ,a leading IT and business services company, today announced the results of a high-performance benchmark test carried out on FASTWIRE Open, Logica’s messaging hub, powered by IBM processors. The hub can now process over five million SWIFT Fin messages per day. The test was carried out in conjunction with a tier one banking client, which is one of world’s largest users of SWIFT – demonstrating the hub’s ability to support global banks.

 

FASTWIRE Open can scale to support the future growth of user banks, enabling them to not only reduce operational and network costs but also to take advantage of high throughput and adaptability to meet their demanding and growing requirements.

 

“Banks need to gain greater efficiencies if they are to preserve profit margins, given escalating payments volumes and sustained revenue pressure,” said Andy Schmidt, research director at TowerGroup. “Centralised messaging hubs that are scalable and integrated give banks the flexibility and control that their payments businesses require. This allows banks to achieve savings through reduced messaging costs – savings that can be passed on to clients.”

 

Tim Brew, director of global financial products at Logica, commented: “Payments volumes are increasing exponentially as global banks continue to grow, either organically or through M&A activity. Our high performing financial messaging hub enables banks to reduce costs by consolidating their multiple systems onto regional or global hubs. The client that participated in this test has proven that its future FASTWIRE Open-based messaging platform will support significant growth in its messaging traffic. The solution can clearly support our clients’ business expansion, but it also enables banks to reduce the overall cost per message and handle the ever increasing occurrence of unexpected volume peaks in messages.”

 

The benchmark test was undertaken by Logica at IBM’s performance testing facility in Montpellier, France, during June 2009. FASTWIRE Open, Logica’s messaging hub, achieved a throughput of up to 200 messages per second, while actively using only 16 processors, exceeding the target of 150 messages per second.

 

For the test, the system processed SWIFT format messages while concurrently managing day-to-day activities such as archiving and database replication. The platform used an Oracle 10g database, operating with Oracle RAC and Dataguard, and was based on IBM 64-Core Power6 5GHz Based Power 595.

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NOTES TO EDITORS

 

About Logica

Logica is a leading IT and business services company, employing 40,000 people. It provides business consulting, systems integration, and IT and business process outsourcing services. Logica works closely with its customers to release their potential – enabling change that increases their efficiency, accelerates growth and manages risk. It applies its deep industry knowledge, technical excellence and global delivery expertise to help its customers build leadership positions in their markets. Logica is listed on both the London Stock Exchange and Euronext (Amsterdam) (LSE: LOG; Euronext: LOG). More information is available at www.logica.com.

 

 

About Logica’s payments expertise

Logica has more than 30 years of experience in delivering payments products to the largest financial institutions. Logica is the only company to provide an end-to-end payments hub enabling banks to move from duplicated, siloed payments systems to a modern hub environment. Logica’s All Payments Solution (LAPS) can process the full range of payment types (retail, domestic, international, urgent/timed, single and mass payments) within a single deployment. It is fully SEPA compliant and live, supporting SEPA in over 10 countries. LAPS is the only payments hub capable of supporting SEPA transactions beyond current domestic-level requirements. It can provide any global bank with a single consolidated Europe-wide SEPA deployment for when payments traffic merges in the near future from domestic to SEPA.  Furthermore, this massively scalable and high performing solution enables banks to optimise hardware utilisation and reduce infrastructure costs. For further information, visit http://www.logica.com/payments/400012772

 

About FASTWIRE Open

 

FASTWIRE Open is Logica’s high-end, network independent messaging platform. Based on Logica’s proven service-oriented open architecture, it delivers high performance and reliability on modern low cost infrastructures. It processes and routes all message types including payments and securities messages in SWIFT, ISO, XML and proprietary formats – enabling banks to choose the most cost effective route saving on unnecessary transaction fees.

 

 

Media contacts:

 

Sabrina Mukund                    

Logica India

+91 96633 81233

sabrina.mukund@logica.com

 

Tanuja Singh

Genesis Burson-Marsteller

+91 99863 62428

tanuja.singh@bm.com     

 

 

Warm regards,

Susan John

Genesis Burson-Marsteller

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»  Flush with iPhone cash, Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) spent $390,000 to lobby the government on a variety of subjects, in particular the “funding education technology” part of the government stimulus package. [Forbes]

»  The FCC has given the green light to a merger between Sprint (NYSE: S) and Virgin Mobile (NYSE: VM). [Yahoo Tech]

»  Clearwire (NSDQ: CLWR) CEO Bill Morrow says the fact that his company isn’t battling companies like AT&T (NYSE: T) “on the classic wireless phone system” will help it beat them on 4G/WiMax. [Seattle Times]

»  Deutsche Bank doesn’t think that Nokia (NYSE: NOK), even with its netbook, will be immune from the cratering handset market over the next few years. [Barrons]

»  T-Mobile is trying out a 4G network in Europe using Huawei LTE base stations. [Cellular News]

»  An Apple blogger from Finland legally unlocked his iPhone and registered it on another network. He credits his carrier Sonera, which he claims is a “less-repugnant version of AT&T.”  [The Register UK]

In its campaign to be first among the cellular operators to roll out a fourth-generation network, Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) said it has made its first phone calls in Boston and Seattle using VoIP over the emerging LTE technology. Release.

The calls mark the very first baby step in rolling out a nationwide 4G network, which will compete with Clearwire’s WiMax service and offer superior speeds and capacity to today’s 3G network. But are the tests based on technology that will be used when Verizon launches commercially next year? Kind of.

Verizon’s Network VP Tom Sawanobori told us that it is technically LTE and that the hardware is commercial today, but the software is not. “The software is pre-commercial…We plan to introduce commercial service on slightly newer version of Release 8, which meets our requirements.”

Partners involved in the test included Alcatel-Lucent Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC) for base stations equipment; LG (SEO: 066570) and Samsung for devices and Starent Networks and Nokia (NYSE: NOK) Siemens Networks for network equipment. There’s 10 cell sites up and running in both cities.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Business News from NXP

 

NXP Semiconductors powers Centre for Railway Information Systems’ Drive to Make Railway Travel Effortless for Passengers

Indian Railways to use NXP’s contactless MIFARE DESFire
enabled smart ticketing

 

Chennai, India, August 13, 2009 – NXP Semiconductors, the independent company founded by Philips today announced that its secure microcontroller-based chip technology MIFARE DESFire has been selected by the Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS), an IT organization under the Ministry of Railways, to power contactless smart cards for automatic fare collection using ATVMs (Automatic Ticket Vending Machines) across various cities in India. Indian Railways, one of the largest and busiest rail transport networks in the world – carrying over 18 million passengers every day – will utilize NXP’s technology solutions to improve the overall passenger experience and drive operational efficiencies. These announcements confirm NXP’s strategy to focus on its leadership position in the Identification business in India. On a global basis, 75% of all electronic tickets in public transport use NXP MIFARE technology.

 

CRIS developed an Automatic Ticket Vending Machine (ATVM) as part of an Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS), for which it has won a Prime Minister’s Award for excellence in public administration from 2006 to 2008. A 28-member project team, led by Mr Vikram Chopra, Director (Operations), CRIS, received the award on behalf of the Indian Railways from the Prime Minister last year.

 

CRIS had initially in 2007 developed the smart card based contactless ticketing solutions using NXP’s MIFARE 1KB Classic chip in Mumbai Suburban Railway & Chennai, wherein approximately 5 Lakh Cards were issued to passengers in the Central / Western Railway at Mumbai & Southern Railway at Chennai.

 

 

These user-friendly ATVMs will be rolled out across five major cities in India, namely New Delhi, Secunderabad, Kolkata, Bhubaneswar and Pune. Together with card and inlay-manufacturer Siepmann’s Card Systems, NXP will provide MIFARE DESFire-based ICs for approximately 6.5 Lakh contactless cards over a period of one year. This project is expected to go live in September 2009 and will initially be rolled out in two cities. The Smart Card ticketing solution developed by CRIS using NXP’s MIFARE DESFire technology is based on the international ISO 14443A standard, and provides industry-leading levels of security. This solution in its entirety has been conceptualized, designed and manufactured in India to meet Indian commuter needs under the guidance and vision of CRIS, enabled by NXP’s technologies and ecosystem partners.

 

The vision of CRIS and its development of the ATVM have been instrumental in upgrading the ticketing systems; thereby replacing traditional paper based ticketing with Smart Cards. The adoption of contactless ticketing will greatly reduce queues at manual ticketing counters, prove economically viable and ultimately drive process efficiencies. This partnership with NXP and Siepmann’s Card Systems will help CRIS provide a secure, cost-effective and superior offering to commuters on Indian Railways.

 

Mr. P Vishwanath Bhas, Managing Director, Siepmann’s Card Systems Pvt Ltd, said, “We are pleased to partner with NXP who have supported us in creating a state-of-the-art, secure and scalable solution for Indian Railways. We have worked closely with NXP to develop a cost-effective, manageable product that will withstand Indian conditions and provide innovative solutions to transport systems.”

 

Commenting on the development, Mr. Ashok Chandak, senior director, global sales and marketing for India for NXP Semiconductors said, “We see a significant growth in the use of contactless Smart Card technology in transport systems in India, and are well positioned to cater to the needs of current transport infrastructure upgrades, especially road and rail projects. The project with CRIS reiterates our position as a leading player in the field of contactless Smart Card ICs used in public transit networks and access management worldwide.”

 

“NXP’s secure technology platforms are ideal for multi-application smart cards in transport schemes, e-government and identity applications, and have been used in several projects such as the multipurpose national identity cards with the Government of India”, Mr. Chandak added.

 

 

About NXP Semiconductors

NXP is a leading semiconductor company founded by Philips more than 50 years ago. Headquartered in Europe, the company has about 29,000 employees working in more than 30 countries and posted sales of USD 5.4 billion (including the Mobile & Personal business) in 2008. NXP creates semiconductors, system solutions and software that deliver better sensory experiences in TVs, set-top boxes, identification applications, mobile phones, cars and a wide range of other electronic devices. News from NXP is located at www.nxp.com.

 

About NXP’s MIFARE DESFire Technology

MIFARE DESFire delivers the perfect balance of speed, performance and cost efficiency, while being completely compatible with existing MIFARE reader hardware. Its open concept allows seamless integration of ticketing media such as smart paper tickets, and mobile ticketing based on Near Field Communication (NFC) technology. DES indicates the 3DES hardware cryptographic engine for enciphering transmission data, and ‘Fire’ indicates its outstanding position as a fast, innovative, reliable and secure IC in the contactless proximity transaction market.

                                          

About Siepmann’s Card Systems Pvt Ltd

Siepmann’s Card Systems Pvt. Ltd. is a leader in card manufacturing, offering complete consultancy services through its layout visualizing and designing department to assist clients in designing the card fascia to their specifications. Smart Cards with pre-printed fascia are also offered by Siepmann’s Card Systems. The pre-printed matter (card fascia) is protected as the card has been prepared as per the standard specifications laid for plastic card production (ISO 7810). Stringent production and quality measures are followed for the production of these cards. News from Siepmann’s Card Systems can be found at: www.siepmanns.net/

 - ENDS -

 

For further press information, please contact:

 

NXP Semiconductors

APAC:              Anne Suzan Ariens Tel. +65 6882 4416 anne.suzan.ariens@nxp.com