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Red Bend Software, a vendor of Mobile Software Management products, has announced that it has combined its vCurrent Mobile and vRapid Mobile products into a single tool for mobile software management.

The combined product, called vRapid Mobile, is an MSM client "capable of managing any type of software on any mobile platform or device," according to company officials. The idea is to make it easier to move from updating firmware as one complete image to supporting advanced use cases, where embedded software is managed by individual components. It also lets users enable management of built-in and downloadable applications.

VRapid Mobile will be pitched to device manufacturers, mobile operators and software developers as a way to "independently manage their software assets on mobile devices in a unified and standards-based way across mobile platforms," according to company officials: "With firmware over-the-air updating, manufacturers should be able to reduce support costs and increase consumer satisfaction by remotely updating firmware with software improvements and new functionality."

And by managing software components over-the-air, operators can increase data revenues by adding and updating branded applications and service enablers in embedded software without requiring a complete maintenance release. Developers can speed time to market of new applications and versions, faster than handset replacements cycles, by independently managing built-in and downloadable applications and their software dependencies.

Chris Hazelton, Research Director - Mobile and Wireless at The 451 Group, said recently that as device vendors, mobile operators and now ISVs look for opportunities for growth in a period of slowing device replacement cycles, "the ability to update and manage features of an installed base of devices over the air becomes critically important."

Existing Red Bend vCurrent Mobile customers can upgrade to vRapid Mobile FOTA version 6 for no additional fee. Launched in 2003, Red Bend's vCurrent Mobile is deployed in more than 475 million mobile devices. Founded in 1999, Red Bend is a privately held, venture capital-financed company with offices in China, Israel, Japan, Korea, the U.K. and the U.S.
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The latest version of Bango's mobile analytics service, Bango Analytics v4, provides mobile site owners with mobile analytics in real time "regardless of network connection," company officials say.

Bango officials stress the interoperability of network connections since it's not unusual for smartphone users to swap between WiFi and operator gateway as they move around during the day.

Bango CEO Ray Anderson, concerning the launch, says "History is repeating itself. Businesses have benefited from choosing products like Omniture and Coremetrics to get data of their website traffic. The same thing is happening in the mobile world."

He says the latest version of Bango's mobile analytics service lets businesses track unique visitors whether a mobile user connects via operator gateway, WiFi or home broadband -- even if users change their connection. It also has the capability of its Identifier technology, "so now everyone who interacts with a mobile Web site or mobile campaign has a privacy protected, unique user ID, no matter what type of network connection they use." 

The product lets people see metrics by the hour, so marketers have a better understanding how a mobile marketing campaign is performing in real time so any necessary adjustments can be made. There are advanced filtering and sorting for segmentation of mobile data, "so it's quick to get to the results needed on a case by case basis," company officials say: "Live data is used to provide greater accuracy, rather than pre-cached reports which throw away the original raw information."

A 30-day trial is offered on their home page.
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Sitronics, a vendor of telecommunications, information technology and microelectronics in Russia and the CIS, with a growing presence in other EEMEA markets, has announced two contracts with Sistema Shyam TeleServices, the pan-Indian telecommunications operator, to deliver, deploy and service its CRM and billing system.

The contracts amount to $64.2 million, and are expected to be implemented within three years.

The project will be implemented in three stages, Sitronics officials say, "in direct correlation with Sistema Shyam TeleServices' subscriber base growth." The deployment of the new system, based on FORIS, will enable the Indian operator to service its subscriber base and hopefully streamline its internal business processes.

The FORIS tools are currently used for the networks of 25 telecommunications operators in a number of countries, including Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Czech Republic, Germany, covering over 100 million customers.

Sergey Aslanian, President of Sitronics, said this being the firm's largest project in India, it "will allow us to strengthen Sitronics' position in this promising market where we recently established our subsidiary."

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CRM Text Solutions, a vendor of mobile CRM and marketing products, has announced the release of its text messaging API which lets any software vendor provide a mobile component to their offerings.

This API is built on CRM Text Solutions' patent pending method for routing SMS text messages without the use of keywords. "Within days any software provider can add text messaging to their products through Web services accessing our real-time, two-way text messaging engine," says Stan Bradbury, President of CRM Text Solutions.

SMS providers usually offer a single shared-use common short code. CRM Text Solutions officials are betting on the appeal of their Text Messaging API, which provides access to a stack of common short codes. This technology, they claim, "guarantees an exclusive common short code path between all mobile subscribers and the business they opted-in to," so messages go to the right place without keywords or guessing based on the last company using the common short code.

The Text Messaging API also provides access to a new mobile append tool. "With a 30 percent hit rate and growing," company officials say, "mobile append can match opt-ins to mobile campaigns with head of household, home address and e-mail address information delivered in real-time." This information can then be sent back to a client's database for further marketing contact.

The Mobile Append tool is on top of additional API data services that help convert e-mail lists to text message opt-ins and clean up existing phone data to identify mobile phone numbers already captured.

CRM Text Solutions' Text Messaging API also features opt-in and opt-out help management and exclusive opt-in keywords for any business to promote in their advertising. CRM Text Solutions also has access to a variety of vanity common short codes such as NEWCAR, HOMES, REPAIR and LAWYER.