[Nokia continues to gain support for an open standards based archictecutre in the software bridge between mobile and web domains.]

BEA Systems, Inc., Borland Software Corporation, Hewlett-Packard Company, IBM, Oracle and Sun Microsystems, Inc., the leading IT infrastructure and application server vendors, today announced their support for the open mobile architecture initiative, reflecting growing endorsement of an open standards based mobile architecture that will drive the adoption of mobile software and services. These companies plan to work closely together with the mobile communications industry to leverage web applications in the mobile context and bring mobile extensions to the fixed Internet infrastructure.

The companies intend to focus on creating interoperable server solutions for service providers, corporations and mobile operators. Joint specifications will be developed in full compliance with the guidelines provided by the relevant industry standardization bodies.

The IT industry's commitment to the open mobile architecture initiative marks the beginning of the next phase of mobile services, by incorporating a mobile extension for Java(TM) 2 Platform Enterprise Edition (J2EE) based application servers. This effort will lead to the development of uniform mobile application programming interfaces (APIs), providing developers with optimal tools for incorporating mobility in their applications and thus fuel worldwide growth of mobile services and third-party software innovation.

The companies recognize that creating applications for the mobile context poses unique challenges to developers. However, widely used and best-in-class user interface implementations can reduce development and deployment costs, while opening up access to a new and larger customer base. Developers will be able to address both web- and mobile customers with the same underlying application design and maintain superior usability in both environments.

The companies have agreed to work together with operators and network infrastructure manufacturers to facilitate the creation of mobile services using J2EE application servers. A target of this joint work is to hide the infrastructure complexity and leverage the unique characteristics of mobile networks, such as presence, location awareness and mobile authentication. Ultimately, this is expected to bring greater choice of services for consumers and corporations in a non-fragmented platform environment.

New products and solutions combining the mobile domain with the World Wide Web will be based on open mobile architecture enablers, such as Java(TM) and 3GPP compliant technologies, such as WAP2.0/XHTML, MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) and SyncML. In order to facilitate the specification process in the J2EE API technology domain, the companies have agreed to jointly prepare the specification proposals prior to submitting them to the Java Community Process (JCP (SM)).

Today's announcements further compounds the industry's commitment to the open mobile architecture initiative announced at Comdex, Las Vegas (November 13th). At the Las Vegas tradeshow, mobile communication industry leaders jointly announced their aim of creating a global and open mobile software and services market. Industry stakeholders also came together to boost the early introduction of new, interoperable mobile internet access and visual content downloading services worldwide, utilizing the GSM/GPRS evolution and future 3G mobile telecommunications networks based on WCDMA technology.

The scope of the open mobile architecture initiative encompasses terminal client software modules for mobile terminal vendors and the corresponding server solutions. By following consistent global and open standards, these industry leaders will be able to provide their customers with a wide selection of different competitive, yet interoperable solutions and services, and hence promote significant industry growth, as well as ensure that economies of scale are enjoyed throughout the industry.

"Nokia is delighted to see that the charter for open mobile architecture is gaining momentum and expanding to the IT infrastructure domain. It is important that BEA Systems, Borland, HP, IBM, Oracle and Sun share the view with the leading telecommunications companies in November on the significance of open standards in the making of the future digital services environment. Together, we are laying the foundation for an architecture that will bridge the mobile and web domains, creating a seamless user experience and enabling truly powerful services. Server infrastructure application interfaces, such as mobile APIs for J2EE, have a key role in the creation of an interoperable services market. We are confident that global open standards will boost competition and bring the best solutions for the highly demanding mobile customers," said Pertti Korhonen, Senior Vice President, Mobile Software, Nokia.

"BEA is an enthusiastic supporter of convergence in pervasive computing technologies," said Scott Dietzen, chief technical officer of BEA Systems, Inc. "To date, the many successful multi-channel end-users and ISVs have been challenged by the need to support literally hundreds of different wireless devices, as well as multiple mark-up languages, protocols, standards, and location-based services. We fully believe the commitment to standards such as J2EE, J2ME, XHTML, and SyncML is key to reducing the complexity in this space. This initiative is well designed to help apply the "Web effect" to the wireless marketplace, which in turn will make it easier for our customers to build multi-channel applications for pervasive clients."

"Borland and Nokia share a common vision for the next generation of mobile applications. These applications will be written and deployed "end-to-end" from the mobile device through the network infrastructure to the integrated enterprise and Internet servers," said Ted Shelton, senior vice president and chief strategy officer, Borland. "Borland has a history of fully implementing industry standards to ensure interoperability across the enterprise runtime infrastructure. Working with industry leaders on open standards such as the open mobile architecture underscores Borland's strategy to provide a complete application development and deployment environment across multiple wireless platforms."

"We are delighted to be a part of this industry-wide initiative and, importantly, believe that it will stimulate value creation for customers as their lives become increasingly mobile", said Rich DeMillo, vice president and chief technology officer, HP. "HP has a rich tradition of championing open standards and market-unifying architectures as they help our customers by leveling the playing field for developers and paving the way for widespread innovation."

"We are encouraged by the coalescence of the industry around a common architecture for building mobile applications and its collective endorsement of core open industry standards. " says Jon Prial, vice president of marketing and strategy for IBM's Pervasive Computing Division. "Consumers and businesses alike will benefit from a concerted industry initiative to speed the deployment of the next generation of mobile services."

"Oracle has a long history of providing our carrier and enterprise customers with J2EE based open-standards support for the development and deployment of wireless applications on Oracle9i Application Server," said Denise Lahey, senior vice president of the mobile products and services division at Oracle Corp. "We look forward to accelerating the adoption of mobile software and services through participation in the open mobile architecture initiative."

"Sun is committed to open standards and is supportive of this industry-wide initiative to create an open mobile architecture using Java technology because it provides greater choice in the global market for mobile software and services," said Patricia Sueltz, executive vice president for the Software Systems Group at Sun Microsystems, Inc.

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