Written by: Magnus L. Olsson and Johan Hjelm

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The Open Mobile Alliance was formed on June 12, 2002, after several months of discussions among the leading companies of the mobile industry—operators as well as manufacturers. IT companies and content providers were also invited to join. From the very start, the role of the OMA in the value chain was meant to differ from that of previous standards organizations. Likewise, its approach focuses mainly on interoperating services instead of on a stack of protocols. The idea is to offer enabling technology for delivering relevant, end-to-end, high-performance services. The authors explain how, while taking into account the true needs of the market and complying with business requirements, the OMA provides various parties interested in service layer functionality with the means of developing standards. The authors also show why it is important to provide solutions that fulfill the visions of the OMA.

[First published in Ericsson Review no. 01, 2003]