Mobile phone address books have undergone several generations of change. What started as a simple list of personal and business contacts evolved into a self-updating address book (e.g. Plaxo), the network address book (which unifies contact information from multiple sources) and the social address book, pioneered by social networks such as Facebook and MySpace. Now, the next generation has arrived, the Mobile Cloud Address Book.
What is the Mobile Cloud Address Book, how does it differ from its predecessors, and what are its benefits?
The Mobile Cloud Address Book is a unified repository of contact information that resides in the Internet cloud. It consists of a database of people's contacts. It stores diverse information for each contact, including their name, organization, address, phone numbers, email addresses, social network IDs, pictures and other attributes such as notes, important dates and more.
This information can come from a wide variety of sources. It can be synced with mobile devices, a web portal, email systems, desktop apps such as Outlook, social networks and other systems.
Perhaps most importantly, the Mobile Cloud Address Book can be the foundation of a diverse set of end user services offered by a mobile services provider. These services include mobile backup, messaging, app and media stores, social networking and more.
A Mobile Cloud Address Book is distinguished from prior generations of address book technology in that it resides and operates in the Internet cloud. It embodies the attributes and benefits that are ascribed to cloud computing, in particular:
1) Variable and efficient data storage and network utilization
2) Greater automation, such as self-updating software and data
3) Flexibility and extensibility
4) Universal access, including mobile devices
5) Allows IT to focus on other things
6) Reduced cost
The Funambol Mobile Cloud Address Book is based on Funambol Carrier Edition, which is designed for large-scale deployments of tens of thousands to millions of users. It is based on mobile open source software and open standards. The advantage of open source is that it provides the broadest device compatibility, including support for the iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Symbian, and billions of feature phones. As customers have full, unfettered access to the source code, the solution can be readily extended and customized to meet their specific needs, as well as branded and tightly integrated into their systems.
The Funambol Mobile Cloud Address Book is powered by the SyncML (OMA DS) standard that is built into more than one billion phones. Funambol is one of the world's leading advocates and experts in SyncML. This uniquely enables the Funambol Mobile Cloud Address Book to properly interoperate with more mobile devices than any other alternative.
For more information about the Funambol Mobile Cloud Address Book and how it can help your organization, please contact the Funambol Sales Team.
© 2012 Funambol, Inc. All rights reserved.
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