Sending out an SMS

So your business wants to send wireless messages to Parisian partners? Perhaps you’d like to SMS your latest stock prices to stockholders in Stockholm? How about text messaging a transaction to a business in Brazil?

With a new service from 724 Solutions (www.724.com), in partnership with MobileSys (www.mobilesys.com) and MobileWay (www.mobileway.com), businesses now can send text messages almost anywhere in the world, and make sure they arrive.

The service, simply called “Message Service,” offers access to more than 90% of wireless carriers worldwide, allowing businesses to ensure timely delivery of 1- and 2-way messages while confirming delivery and receipt of wireless messages anywhere in the world.

“724 Solutions’ Message Service delivers the total notification package — from the creation of a message and its delivery to a return alert verifying that the message was received,” said John Sims, the Internet-infrastructure provider’s chief executive. “With time-sensitive information, quick, global end-to-end delivery is critical.”

By leveraging MobileSys and MobileWay’s carrier relationships, the service provides immediate access to networks worldwide. MobileSys is a wireless infrastructure service provider for enterprise and e-business. MobileWay facilitates data and money flows in the wireless space.

“Together, they allow us to offer direct connects to 90% of the world’s carriers and be a single global provider for confirmed delivery out to our customers,” said John Mennel, 724 vice president, platform products.

The service comprises three products. The 724 Solutions alerts platform offers an internally based, personalized alerts service, allowing businesses to securely manage the content and delivery of alerts containing time-sensitive information.

The notification engine provides a single queue that allows a user to monitor the status of alerts delivered to the 724 Solutions Message Centre, pager networks and e-mail channels. It also enables a customer to connect directly to a carrier’s SMS center (SMSC) or pager network. The message center routes alerts generated by applications at a customer site to MobileSys or MobileWay for quick delivery to the carrier from a secure hosted environment. 724 Solutions then monitors the quality of service and routes responses and message confirmations back to the enterprise.

“(Enterprises) run mission-critical, time-sensitive applications and it’s extremely important for them to have timely, confirmed delivery of messages to any user anywhere in the world,” Mennel said.

Across the MobileSys and MobileWay networks, 724 can provide a global footprint and a single-contact for enterprises according to their service level. In North America today, enterprises can send email to wireless devices via the Internet. But message delivery is unconfirmed, there’s no level of quality and it sometimes can take hours. In European and Asian countries, it’s possible for a company to build a direct connection to a carrier for confirmed messaging.

But it’s expensive, enterprises have to maintain that network connection and it only sends the message to one carrier. If businesses have multiple carriers, they would have to build out multiple connections, according to Mennel.

The Message Service solution addresses the need to provide personalized notification services and enables enterprises to immediately act upon that notification using 2-way messaging, particularly where financial transactions are involved. It also offers a single point of entry to carrier networks worldwide for the distribution and dissemination of business’ 1- and 2-way messages.

This helps enterprises avoid the time-consuming, costly requirement of securing direct relationships with each carrier in every part of the world in which they do business.

According to Mennel, this solution is the first to offer such flexible implementation options and global reach. Customers can choose to host the network-agnostic solution on their own site, let 724 host it, or combine both options.