O2 to Upgrade its Mobile Back-Up Service

NewBay Software has announced a contract win to add enhanced functionality to O2 UKÃ's Bluebook service, which provides back-up services for customer mobile content.

"Bluebook is a highly successful service for O2 and we are excited to be working with NewBay to add more feature rich functionality. NewBay fully understands the mobile user. They continue to develop innovative services that our subscribers want, while staying focused on making the services as easy as possible to use," said Christine Marsters, Head of Products at O2 UK.

The new functionality in Bluebook allows all messages, both SMS and MMS, to be automatically backed up by the operator (previously the user could only backup messages by sending them to an SMS short code). All messages a user sends or receives are automatically copied from the MMSC and SMSC. NewBay LifeCache recognises the MSISDN associated with each Bluebook account and stores messages in the appropriate personal Bluebook. The integration with the portal address book ensures that all correspondence is assigned the same naming convention the user associates with that particular MSISDN.

In order to effectively manage the increase in traffic and significant volume of simultaneous messages that this service generates, NewBay deployed a filtering application that screens messages based on set rules such as black listed numbers, contact details or message type.

"This is one of the most practical mobile services around. I use it myself and currently have thousands of messages stored from birthday wishes to Happy New Year messages I received from my friends," commented Dr Nagappan Arunachalam, CMO at NewBay. "WhatÃ's more, from the operator perspective it is also one of the ‘stickiestÃ' services as subscriber personal messages and content are stored on the network. Operators are uniquely positioned to be able to automatically backup messages over the air. Which means, no applications to be downloaded and no configuration needed, it couldnÃ't be easier for the user."

The new deployment of Bluebook also allows users to publish and share their content in public blogs in addition to their private multimedia albums. Now that content can be published to the public, O2 UK also license NewBayÃ's moderation tool to ensure only appropriate content is displayed.

Posted to the site on 8th April 2008