Volantis Mobile Content Storefront

About Volantis
Volantis is the worlds leading supplier of Intelligent Content Adaptation solutions for the Mobile Information Age, providing applications, tools and platforms that solve the complexity ofdelivering optimized data services to any mobile device. Volantis extensive experience of serving content providers, mobile network operators, and enterprises, along with its standards leadership, enables it to create innovative technology for the Mobile Information Age that is more useful and more useable than the PC Internet of today. Volantis is used around the world by organizations such as 3, AAA, AdInfuse, Aspire, AT&T, CBS, Channel 4, eBay, FT.com, GarantiBank, IBM, Lastminute.com, MobileOne, MTN, Orange, Sports.comm, Telefonica Moviles, Telecom Italia Mobile, Telenor, Telecom New Zealand, Turkcell and World Wide Wrestling Entertainment. Volantis global headquarters are in Seattle, USA, with international offices in London, UK; Hong Kong, China; Madrid, Spain and Krakow, Poland. Volantis is privately held with investors Accel Partners, Kennet Partners and SOFTBANK Europe Ventures.

Our Customers

Product Guide
Introduction
Merchandising Compelling Content
Explosive growth of the Mobile Information Age presents wireless carriers and content providers with an excellent opportunity to use mobile data services to create revenue, extend their brand reach, deliver new products and services, and reach new and existing customers in exciting and innovative ways. Compelling content is the key to generating these additional revenue streams and promoting your brand across the mobile and multi-channel Internet. However, cost-effectively delivering compelling mobile services whilst managing the underlying complexity of device diversity and distribution channels can be a significant challenge and barrier to entry for many organizations. Storefront enables management and publication of multiple-branded, multiple language services from a single content store and can distribute these via multiple mobile and other channels including WAP, I-mode, PC web and emerging channels. Content providers can deliver direct-to-consumer and via carrier portals, whilst carriers can Volantis Mobile Content Storefront is a complete solution for marketing and merchandizing rich media content across wireless, PC and emerging channels, with pre-integrated support for 3rd party advertising services. It is a sophisticated menu and content management solution for the manipulation, management and publishing of personalized and optimized content for multi-channel services. It enables wireless carriers and content providers to rapidly and easily promote and sell a wide range of content, including wallpapers, ringtones, audio, video, games, MMS and interactive content such as quizzes, polls, and competitions through multiple channels whilst automatically optimizing content for c.5,000 devices. optimize their own and partner portals.

Volantis Mobile Content Storefront

Benefits to Content Providers/Carriers:

Simplifies and lowers cost/time of managing multi-channel storefronts whilst ensuring best possible coverage for growing device diversification Easily manage your digital assets via intuitive web-based consoles Merchandize your compelling content via multiple mechanisms: PPE, subscription and promotions Deliver highest quality user experience to broadest audience Refresh your content automatically Seamless integration with: Existing Service Delivery Platforms (Carriers) Carrier and 3rd party systems: billing, messaging etc (Content Providers) Coverage of the largest and most complete Device Database Device independent rendering

Benefits to Subscribers /End-users:

Simplifies navigation and discovery of content, whilst ensuring best possible content for the subscribers handset Optimized content for browsing and download Dynamic, refreshed and engaging content Easy buying experience with choice of payment methods My Account for managing download and subscriber history

Summary of Key Features

Deliver Highest Quality User Experience to Broadest Audience Uncompromised user experience with compelling rich media sites and automatic content optimization exploiting full capabilities of c.5,000 devices Faster time to content with personalization of content and navigation One-click downloads optimized for supported best device format Easy buying experience with one-click purchases via subscriptions, pay per event and loyalty schemes charged via the phone bill, 3rd party billing systems or Premium SMS Fast and reliable with device-optimized performance and output Seamless integration across fixed and wireless, browsing and messaging Remove Complexity: Save Time, Effort and Cost Minimum effort required to ensure sites are optimized for handsets Easy and direct high-precision control of brand and content Reduce costs of content management using graphical non-technical tools, pre-scheduling and business rules Efficient integration with existing systems and content sources Reduced costs of operations and maintenance with less requirement for device knowledge, skills and tools Efficient non-technical content management environment with advanced productivity capabilities such as templates and content carousel Re-use templates for billing integrations Low Risk Implemented by leading wireless carriers, media and entertainment brands, and wireless solutions providers Serving over 250 million subscribers Rapid time to market Instantly support c.5,000 existing devices and new devices as they launch CBS selected Volantis as a partner for CBS TV. CBS deploy Storefront to mobilize WAP portals for CBS News, CBS SportsLine, Entertainment Tonight, CW TV, The Showbuzz and their smash hit show CSI. Volantis Storefront also enables support for events-driven marketing such as the NBA finals and March Madness.

The Solution: Storefront

Management
Easily manage your content & customers

Display
Provide the best/optimized end-user experience

Integration
Integrate with wireless carriers & 3rd party system

Compelling Content

Delivery
Deliver to any IP-enabled device (PC, mobile, etc)

Commerce
Monetize your digital assets & brand

Storefront Architecture
Overview
Storefront is a flexible platform for multi-channel rendering and delivery of optimized content and can be easily integrated with existing customer systems, such as subscriber databases and dynamic and static content repositories. To ensure a complete multi-channel content delivery system, Storefront can be seamlessly integrated or function as an integral part of a wireless carriers service delivery platform (SDP). Alternatively, for content producers, such as media and entertainment companies, Storefront can function as the key integration point for any/all 3rd party value added solutions, such as billing/charging providers, advertising servers, existing content management systems, subscriber databases and business rules engines. Storefront consists of a number of main functional areas, as highlighted in the diagram below representing the interaction between the customer, Storefront, external parties and the mobile subscriber/visitor to the multi-channel Storefront. CustomerThe wireless carrier or content provider would be responsible for creating their brand and service guidelines: the look and feel of the service that reflects their corporate identity. They would interact with Storefront through intuitive web consoles to manage their content and the service. External PartiesStorefront has a flexible, modular, webservices based architecture, enabling seamless integration with 3rd party solution providers, where required. These could either be systems within a wireless carriers SDP or with external parties, such as Bango for a direct-to-consumer billing/charging solution or with best of breed solution providers for advanced audio/video transcoding requirements. Storefront utilizes the core services and capabilities of the Volantis Mobile Content Framework, which provides device detection and optimized device-aware rendering to any device using the industrys most comprehensive Device Database containing over 650 attributes for c.5,000 devices and growing.
Branding, Site Design, Editorial & Business Review Content & Service Management

Create once, render many dynamic mobile websites

Black & White WML XHTML

Page weight: 11k

Page weight: 26k Page weight: 32.5k

Customer

Volantis Mobile Content Storefront

Messaging Interface Messaging Interface Subscriber Management & Interface

External Parties
Messaging Gateway Provider

Volantis Mobile Content Framework (with Device Database)

Authentication

Subscriber databases (Customer / MNO)

Billing / Charging Interface

Payment Gateway Providers

Rich Media Transcoder Providers Asset Delivery Management & Interface DRM Providers

Advertising Service Providers

Mobile Subscribers
Mobile HTML Browser i-mode Browser WAP 2 Browser PC Browser IPTV Browser

Functional Overview
Publishing with Storefront
The publishing flow for creating a multi-channel Storefront, from design through to publishing is comprised of three steps as shown in the following diagram. Volantis refers to the published site, all of its associated rendering templates, layouts, themes and integrations with Wireless Carriers, or other 3rd parties as the service. This term encompasses everything required to deliver a deviceoptimized experience to the subscriber. Service Design (Step 1)A designer creates mock-ups of the site storyboard and design guide, and creates the site furniture branded icons and logos that will be used to decorate the site. Service Development (Step 2)The design guide mock-ups are translated into physical layouts, styles and templates using the Eclipse-based Volantis device independent design tools and the site furniture is loaded into the Volantis Mobile Content Framework platform. The content classes, associated business rules, sitemap and navigation structures are defined using the Service Creator GUI, ready for use by a Content Producer in the publishing stage. Unlike traditional PC web site development, which do not have to cater for a vast myriad of potential devices, by splitting this into two elements Volantis is able to create true device independence and thereby deliver optimized content for each and every device in the Volantis Device Database. Service Publishing (Step 3)Content Producers can now populate the service using the Content Editor GUI. This involves uploading content, assigning it to the defined site structure, editing where required and previewing the end-result. Finally, the sitemap is published to the Operational/Live environment, ready for access by the mobile subscriber/visitor. Once a service has been published and has gone live, each time a mobile device requests content, Storefront utilises the Volantis Mobile Content Framework to evaluate the various rendering templates, and delivers the service consistently over a comprehensive range of devices, old and new. The service UI, as presented to the subscriber/visitor, is adapted to give the best possible experience on each and every device. The final page delivered to the device is optimized such that assets are selected or transcoded according to the devices requirements. Tables, used to structure the pages are flattened whilst maintaining the original design intent, and the final mark-up rendered to take account of the devices specific browser capabilities.


Step 1
Service Design

Step 2
Service Development

Step 3
Service Publishing

Eclipse-based Dev Tools

Service Creator GUI

Content Editor GUI

Brand Assets
Screen designs Graphics

Volantis Mobile Content Framework

Create device independent assets Layouts, themes etc

Volantis Mobile Content Storefront

Define: Deployment environments Content Classes Rendering templates users & roles

Volantis Mobile Content Storefront

Upload content Edit content Preview & publish Review & analysis

Site Storyboard
Menu definition Menu relationships Location of content

Optimized pages and graphics mean that page size is minimised, network performance is improved and delivery is fast.

Device-optimized Rendering & Download

Content and Service Management

Overview
Storefront has two intuitive and easy-touse interfaces/consoles (GUIs) accessible globally on a PC via a web browser, such as Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox: Service Creator GUIThis is used to create content classes, create rendering templates, define the location/URL of a service/site, define users and their roles, define default Charge codes and Rights Owners for these content classes. It is principally intended for use by developers during the process of creating a multi-channel/mobile site/service. Content Editor GUIThis is intended for the daily management of the service by a content editor or producer. Here they can manipulate digital assets (content) within the boundaries defined by the developer within the Service Creator GUI, to do such actions as: upload, delete, edit, schedule, preview and publish content.

Service Creator

Define the Service/Site(s) 1. Deployment environments 2. Content Classes 3. Rendering Templates 4. Users and roles

Content Editor

Using the content classes and the rendering templates defined by the developer and conforming to the customers style guide, the content editor can rapidly create sitemaps, navigation and upload content. A single content store and the ability to cross-link any content item means that any asset can be linked-to multiple times from any part of the service, thereby reducing costs of managing the content and encouraging cross-promotion and upselling opportunities. In addition to the interfaces provided within the Storefront application, developers would use the industry-standard Eclipse -based development toolkit to create device independent layouts and themes. The Volantis Mobile Content Framework would

Manage Content & Services/Sites: 1. Upload content 2. Edit Content 3. Preview & publish content 4. Review & analysis of service

then automatically apply the appropriate layout and theme to the requesting device.

Working with Content

Storefront is installed with a set of predefined content classes. Each predefined content class can be modified and edited by users with appropriate access rights from within the Content Editor GUI. These content classes can be recognized as those most commonly used to deliver digital assets to end-users/subscribers of mobile data services. Article Audio Game Image Quiz Video

Merchandizing with Promotions

This capability enables editors to create, analyse and amend promotions thereby increasing potential revenue opportunities. There are a number of predefined promotion types: Price discount (% or $ off) Buy n get x free Accumulative volume discounts: 1-10 for x, 11-20 for y 21-30 for z etc.. Combination of promotion types: buy n get x for y % discount

The time zone of the live service can also be specified, ensuring that any date and time related calculations are performed relative to the published time zone for the service, if it is different from the production locale. Within Storefront, every content item, including content assets, menus and navigation have associated meta-tags that provide a powerful mechanism for multi-language deployments, pricing, filters and business rules. Entirely new content classes can be easily created from templates or from scratch, in the Service Creator GUI. Powerful filters are used within Storefront to enable the display or discarding of content based upon rules. In addition to differential rendering and navigation based upon the device capabilities, the subscriber or network context, flexible rules can be created, such as:

Filters and Business Rules

Content Carousel
Allows editors to easily refresh content regularly to provide compelling and dynamic services for their subscribers/visitors. Editors can pre-load bundles of content items that can be scheduled for automated publishing and unpublishing and can be re-used across multiple services, for example: Image of the day Regenerate interest in archived content, in conjunction with current bestsellers Synchronize with publicity/launch events

If the subscriber is roaming, then deliver smaller content payloads to minimize network data charges If the subscriber is over 18, then allow adult rated content If the subscribers device is not video-capable, then do not display any video menus or content Storefront has a flexible and powerful editing environment to define highly complex business rules and scenarios.

Storefront provides powerful tools for productive editing, including a content carousel, content lifecycle/scheduling, previews, autocomplete searching, bulk asset upload, version control and difference tools.

Multi-Locale and Country Support

To support centralised management of sitemaps for deployment across multiple regions, Storefront provides both multi-language and multi-time zone support. For each service, the default language can be defined which determines which language content will be displayed.
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Authentication
Storefront verifies the users access rights prior to presenting links to content, delivering subscribed messages or when a subscriber has made a download request. This function is carried out in conjunction with the Mobile Subscriber Service (MSS), the Billing/Charging components, the Asset Delivery management and the Messaging components of Storefront Examples of where the authentication is used: Restricting access of premium content to subscribers only Determining the validity of a subscription in terms of available credit Ensuring message delivery to subscribers only

weekly from the start of a subscription. The messaging component of Storefront provides the interface for direct integration to SMSC, and MMSC, either within a wireless carriers infrastructure or to a 3rd party messaging solution provider.

Subscriber Management and Interface

The Volantis Mobile Subscriber Services component is both a repository and application that delivers services associated with subscribers. The repository stores all information related to a subscriber including: User profile Subscription data Interactive response data (e.g. polls, quizzes and competitions) User preferences All transaction records This data is available for detailed reporting and is the power behind providing dynamically generated personalization features, such as welcome back to the site <subscriber>, you have <credits> remaining. The Volantis Mobile Subscriber Service performs interface functions to 3rd party subscriber databases as well as billing systems, creating charging events, in carrier specific formats, where required, including SOAP and URL, XML/RPC, CDR files, URL redirection and Premium SMS.

Messaging Interface
Storefront is capable of content delivery over channels other than HTTP/browse. Examples are SMIL, over MMS or SMS messages and WAP push messages. Storefront leverages the core functionality of Framework to allow the optimization of message-based or WAP push content. It provides the ability to write applications to generate and transmit messages to subscribers devices. This allows applications to be created that can support mass distribution of messages and scheduling of content items, for a given subscriber or groups of subscribers. Storefront supports event-based messaging alerts, such as a sports score updates as well as periodic-based alerts/ subscriptions set against absolute or relative dates, such as every Monday or

Billing/Charging Interface
Charging and payments are handled by 3rd party payment solution providers, such as Bango, PayPal or the wireless carriers themselves. Storefront provides an interface, which can be customised per provider and this interface is referred to as the Storefront Buying Application. This will work in conjunction with the Mobile Subscriber Service, which tracks user data such as subscription and credit status and with the Promotion Engine, which enables editors to create, analyze and amend promotions/charge codes. The Payment Provider will often dictate the buying models that are available, however many are supported or can be configured, for example, Free

Message & Billing Integration

Ad-supported Pay Per Event

 Subscriptions Timed or credit based Promotions Volume/price discount Loyalty points The Financial Times chose Volantis to extend their existing WAP site to UK operator portals Before a subscriber/visitor receives an advice of charge for content, charge codes are combined with other data, such as carrier rating systems, subscriber information and device information, to calculate the actual price for the user. This allows highly flexible rules that support differential pricing, offers and promotions. so as to provide a mobile solution for FT.com subscribers, and to extend the FT.com brand to a new audience. Volantis provide the FT with a single mobile content delivery platform that serves FT.com content to multiple UK operators in their native markup and format. FT.com utilizes the Volantis platform to provide integration in to various operator billing systems, operator-specific content delivery and Storefront not only optimizes rendering to the browser but also optimizes asset downloads, ensuring the best quality user experience. Using device detection, Storefront automatically delivers the highest quality that the device is capable of supporting. Advanced algorithms match up to 650 device attributes against the asset being requested and thereby selects and delivers the best asset. This selection is based upon attributes such as the devices ability to support DRM, multi-media capabilities, usable screen size and resolution. Examples of the types of reporting available are: The Asset delivery component of Storefront provides a robust, secure mechanism for delivering download, and push media over the air, such as articles, wallpapers, ringtones, audio, video and games as well as acting as a security buffer between users and premium content. The asset resolution capability ensures that subscribers/ visitors receive a fast, high quality user experience whilst providers are assured of high levels of security. The delivery server supports industry-standard download techniques including J2ME MIDP OTA download and OMA Generic Content Download Direct HTTP link. Storefront provides a range of mechanisms to protect mobile content from unauthorized use, theft and piracy: access to content is protected by authentication and authorization; masking of asset locations; and providing one-time-use or time-limited asset locations; Digital Rights Management support for OMA Forward Lock and integration to 3rd party systems, for additional functionality such as DRM-CD (Combined Delivery), DRM-SD (Separate Delivery) for super distribution, OMA2 and Microsoft DRM. Downloads per subscriber Downloads per device type Downloads per asset type Download amount per subscriber Download amount per device type Download amount per asset type Download amount (grouped by subscriber) Download amount (grouped by device type) Download amount (grouped by asset type) Purchases per subscriber Purchases per device type Purchases per asset type Subscriptions by subscriber Subscriptions / Unsubscriptions Storefront provides a user interface for real-time in-line reporting functions to collect, analyze and display data extracted from the Mobile Subscriber Service, for example: user id, content id, date/time range, purchase or download events. These reporting capabilities enable users to interrogate various key performance indicators, such as the financial performance of the content and services on offer, the effectiveness of marketing and
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Asset Delivery and Interface

device-optimization for thousands of different mobile devices.

promotional campaigns and the ability for a customer care agent to respond to support calls by interrogating recent event records and logs.

Reporting and Customer Care

Subscription statistics Page access by MSISDN Page access by subscriber

Deployment Options
For deployment purposes Storefront should be considered as two Java web applications (webapps), which would be deployed into standard web application servers: Design-timeThis equates to the Content and Service Management functions, i.e. the Storefront GUIs. Run-timeThis equates to all other functional areas involved in the presentation and delivery of content to the subscriber.

Standard Installation
The standard (distributed) deployment model is recommended for all live, subscriber facing deployments as it supports scaling and has higher resilience capabilities. The Design-time environment is installed on its own dedicated server, with the run-time environments also deployed on their own dedicated servers. The central Design-time GUI can be configured to publish to multiple

There are two possible deployment options: Single server installationBoth the Design-time and Runtime webapps are deployed on the same web application server platform. Standard (distributed) installationThe Design-time webapp is deployed on a separate web application server to the Run-time webapp.

run-time environments to support distributed server farms. A Network Load Balancer should be used to distribute the load across multiple servers and should be configured with sticky sessions enabled.

Web Browser

Single Server Installation

Typically used for small scale installations. Both the Design-time and Run-time webapps are deployed in the same web application server on a single server as shown in the following diagram:
Publish

Storefront GUIs webapp

Content Repository
Java Application Server Hardware Platform: Server 1

Web Browser
HTTP (wap)

Framework Webapp Service Storefront Run-Time webapp

Java Application Server Hardware Platform: Server 2 Publish

Content Repository

Storefront GUIs webapp

Framework Webapp Storefront Run-Time webapp

Service
Java Application Server Hardware Platform

HTTP (wap)

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