Sun Microsystems today announced that it has been selected as the global technology partner for mobileATM.
The mobileATM service, to be launched first in the UK in mid-January, and then globally at later dates, will deliver some of the functionality of the high street cash machine to mobile handsets.
The mobileATM user experience has been designed to emulate the current processes of an ATM and will initially provide consumers with the ability to execute balance enquiries, closely followed by a mobile phone top-up facility, which will allow the addition of credit to any prepay account via the consumers bank account.
In order to launch the service in the UK and then globally, the infrastructure required by mobileATM must be capable of supporting high-volume, secure transactions from the widest possible range of mobile devices, across all operators and with the inclusion of all card issuers connected to the UK's LINK ATM network. This has been achieved through Sun's Java Platform.
Sun has been selected as global technology partner to deliver an open, integrated, reliable, secure and highly scalable infrastructure that can be delivered globally, thereby meeting the requirements of mobileATM business plan. Currently, there are over 600 million Java-enabled handsets in circulation in the world, 60 million of which are in the UK (almost one per person).
Sun has a proven track record as a global technology partner that removes the barriers to interoperability, whilst at the same time incorporating technology platforms that can easily support new business processes and technologies, as is the case with mobileATM.
"Sun's previous experience in delivering similar infrastructures and support to the mobile and finance industries made it a natural choice as our global technology partner," said Alastair Lukies, mobileATM. "The mobileATM service will be available to every single person in the UK, who will have the ability to use it 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We needed a technology partner who can ensure that we meet this demand, not just in the UK, but throughout the world as we roll-out this service, and Sun has a proven track record in managing projects of this scale."
"Mobile devices are getting connected with an increasingly diverse range of services at a startling rate," said Charles Andrews, director of customer sales, Sun Microsystems UK. "mobileATM will deliver a compelling service to millions of people which could have a huge impact on the way they conduct their personal finance, all underpinned by Sun's secure technology. As global technology partner, mobileATM will benefit from our proven track record of industrial-strength scalability, low total cost of ownership, rigorous security and broad platform support."
The versatility, efficiency, platform portability and security of Sun's Java platform made it the ideal technology for mobileATM, particularly as it provided freedom of choice through platform compatibility. Sun was able to offer Java in a variety of application-specific forms, such as the Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition (J2ME) for mobile and wireless applications, which was deployed by mobileATM.
Andrews continues: "The Java platform is the foundation for building and deploying a range of networked services and this implementation has seen the "monetisation of Java". By this we mean that the highly secure and highly scalable aspect of Java enables Sun's partners, such as mobileATM, and Sun's customers, such as banks and operators, to generate revenue from services. Java is at the heart of mobile applications and we firmly believe that the potential of hundreds of millions of mobile device users, hungry for new applications and services will drive creativity, innovation and commercial uptake, therefore creating a shift from selling single discrete items to selling services."
Sun technology was used in the UK deployment of the mobileATM implementation. The solution itself is running on Sun Storage hardware infrastructure, a mixture of SPARC and Opteron servers, all running on Solaris, utilising Sun's Cluster technology to support Sun's latest versoin of its application server and web server.