History

In February 2000, Concise agreed to build a prototype WAP application for an international investment bank based in the City of London. The need was for a functional application that added value to the customer experience.

The bank was motivated to develop a WAP prototype for a number of reasons. Firstly, it was important for the IT function within the bank to gain exposure and understanding of the technology (and system integration issues) that would be faced as we move towards a pervasive computing model. Secondly, it was felt that a certain amount of speculative research into mobile technology was important if the bank was to be seen as an innovator in the marketplace.

The prototype delivered a WAP front-end to an existing global-chat system. The system allows traders to exchange market information and news on stocks and bank affairs. The application is critical to the bank, in that it facilitates the communication of market-related information between key business users.

This prototype will be developed into a full-blown application, critical to the bank's business, which will then be rolled out to all the bank's major trading centers, including London and New York

Another early Concise prototype, designed for demonstration purposes, enabled access to stock information, providing details on stocks, funds and client accounts.

We have since delivered prototypes for other key clients in the investment and private banking sectors: for delivering fund and account information for fund and asset management, and a system combining Reuters and analyst information.

Concise's WAP pilot project objectives were to:

Ø       Identify an appropriate set of tools and platforms for delivering WAP applications

Ø       Gain knowledge of the technologies involved in developing WAP applications

Ø       Deliver a usable and robust WAP application that fulfilled the client's functional specifications

The project began on 7th February, starting with an investigation into tools and mobile devices. By the 17th March, an initial version of the application was demonstrated at the JSIG WAP Forum, held at IBM's South Bank Centre in London.

Since then, our focus has moved to the architecture of an extensible framework that allows WAP solutions to be delivered to multiple client devices, using an XML-based content delivery system.

This paper summarizes the experiences and conclusions of the WAP team after the intensive initial two months of the WAP development program.