Services & Support: Frequently Asked Questions

General Questions

What is Funambol?

Funambol is a mobile data synchronization server that provides push email and PIM synchronization as well as a platform for mobilizing applications. The server is part of an open source Community Edition as well as a commercial Carrier Edition. The company also offers an open source device management server that provides a framework for remotely managing mobile devices.

Funambol includes tools to develop, deploy and manage any mobile project. It is a certified implementation of the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) Data Synchronization (DS) and Device Management (DM) protocols, commonly known as SyncML. OMA DS specifies a standard way to synchronize data between a mobile device and a server. OMA DM specifies a way to remotely manage a mobile device from a server. Funambol fully implements both.

Funambol has passed interoperability testing at recent OMA TestFests, for both OMA DS and DM, including push email. Results are available here.

Funambol enables you to push email to a mobile device from Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, AOL Mail, POP/IMAP servers and other email servers via community and custom projects. It allows you to synchronize PIM (contacts and calendar) data from your SyncML device (Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Siemens and others) to a server. There are also Funambol-provided and community-provided clients for devices where the SyncML client is missing, such as Outlook, BlackBerry (community project), Windows Mobile, Palm (community project) and iPod. You can setup a full PIM synchronization system that allows your Outlook contacts to be in sync with all of your wireless devices.

Funambol provides APIs in Java (J2SE and Java ME) and native C++. If you want to build a mobile application, you can embed the API and easily build a disconnected application that works when the device is offline and that updates data when the device is back online. This is the only way to write wireless applications that work all the time, as devices are not always connected.

There are also Funambol-provided and community-provided connectors to data sources where mobile data is likely to reside, such as RDBMSs, email servers, SugarCRM, LDAP and web-services applications.

What can I do with Funambol?

Funambol enables you to get email on your mobile device. It can push email to Windows Mobile, Java-enabled, BlackBerries and SyncML email compatible phones from Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, AOL Mail and POP/IMAP email servers.

It lets you keep your PIM (contacts and calendar) data in sync with a SyncML-enabled phone as well as Outlook, Win Mobile device (Pocket PC or Smartphone), BlackBerry (community project), Palm (community project) or iPod. The myFUNAMBOL portal allows you to view and manage your PIM data online. It also lets you backup your mobile's address book and calendar on a server so that it is available if you lose your phone.

Funambol can also help you build a wireless application. You can build a mobile app based on a sometimes-connected paradigm i.e. the app works when the device is offline and that updates data when it is online. Sample apps include sales force automation, field force automation, mobile expense report automation, sport scores update, RSS synchronization, database replication, mobile gaming and more.

If you need to support and manage a variety of mobile devices, Funambol's Device Management framework can help you automatically provision and configure device software over-the-air.

Who is Funambol?

Funambol is the company behind the open source project formerly known as Sync4j. It has offices in Silicon Valley, a development center in Italy, and engineers in other countries around the world. Funambol offers commercial and open source licenses for its technology, as well as professional services, training and support.

How long has Funambol been around?

Funambol has been delivering code with the same core team since 2001. Funambol software has been downloaded over one million times, and has been put into production systems in Europe, Asia and the USA.

Where is Funambol developed?

Funambol is developed by an international team centered in Italy. Because the most advanced mobile hardware and systems often arrive in Europe and Asia before the U.S., we develop and test on all three continents. This improves time to market and results in the best mobile software.

What is SyncML?

SyncML is the popular name for an international standard for data synchronization sponsored by the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA), a consortium of 300 hardware and software vendors. The OMA Data Synchronization (DS) standard is what most people mean when they refer to SyncML, but their Device Management (DM) standard is also critical because it provides the core mechanism for over-the-air (OTA) provisioning and configuring of phones.

Which SyncML specification does Funambol support?

SyncML 1.2 and earlier.

Where do I get Funambol client software?

You can download it here.