Jian Ming Zhang

Framework for building a low-cost, scalable, and secured platform for web-delivered business services

Many business services are now being delivered over the Web. This method of delivery is attracting the attention of both small- and medium-sized businesses and providers of application-based services because of its easier access, more affordable fees, and greater efficiency in delivering services to massive numbers of receivers. However, it requires the resolution of several key technical challenges. Data security is of top priority for most users because their data reside on remote servers whose resources are shared among tenants. In addition, such a platform needs to meticulously control the operational and delivery costs so that it remains competitive compared with traditional approaches. We have been developing a low-cost, scalable, and secured platform for Web-delivered business services. The platform enables the delivery of business services over the Web with a set of common business and operational support services, including subscription management, massive multitenancy, federated identity management, Web application security protection, and more. For instance, massive multitenancy deals with the isolation of data and service performance for subscribers. In this paper, we discuss the framework for such a platform, the key challenges for realizing the framework, and the approaches for dealing with the challenges.

iMMS: interactive multimedia messaging service

Multimedia messaging service (MMS) promises a dramatic increase in messaging capabilities for mobile phone users that will enrich their experience. For network operators and content and service providers, it will create a major new source of revenue because it adds features such as color pictures, animations, audio samples, and video clips. However, the current MMS standard provides only a few features that support user interaction, limiting the wide use of value-added messaging services. In this paper, we propose interactive MMS (iMMS) technology that can extend the current MMS standard and enhance interaction capability by embedding eXtensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML) technology into MMS Presentation Language. Moreover, an MMS application server (MAS) is presented in our research work. This framework can help service providers to quickly develop and deploy MMS services. We have implemented and tested a prototype that includes an interactive MMS client on a handheld device and an MAS on a Microsoft Windows® 2000 server.