Sometimes Cindy Groner must feel like she's swimming in circles in a sea of acronyms. As director of mobile traveller services at Sabre, Groner oversees a team of wireless developers who, in the process of coming up with new wireless services for Sabre's customers, must create multiple versions of each page. One in the Wireless Markup Language format for Wireless Application Protocol devices. Another in Handheld Device Markup Language for devices using the Openwave Systems browser. And another in Compact HTML for Nippon Telephone and Telegraph's i-mode devices. Every time content or wireless services change, developers must test the application on multiple devices to make sure the experience is the same on all platforms, a strenuous process.
"When you have to manipulate content for various devices and various standards, it becomes a management issue trying to deliver services," said Groner.
Now, however, Groner said she believes help is on the way. And it doesn't even matter that it's coming in the form of yet another acronym: XHTML. It stands for Extensible HTML, and it's a rapidly emerging standard that could soon allow e-businesses such as Sabre to write online applications just once and deliver them across multiple platformsââ,¬"whether wireless or PC-based.
"XHTML will not just allow us to deliver richer content but will also tremendously speed up our delivery of that content," Groner said.
The payoff? In an industry where it pays to be first to market, Groner and other e-business managers say XHTML will reduce the development and testing time of mobile applications significantly. Groner estimates that with XHTML, she can cut the time it takes Sabre to roll out new wireless features in half. And that, experts say, will encourage e-businesses like Sabre to begin to offer more than the simple applications, such as stock quotes and news updates, that epitomise most wireless applications today.
That's why, having spent millions of dollars developing and deploying wireless applications for multiple devicesââ,¬"cell phones, PDAs (personal digital assistants) and televisionsââ,¬"companies such as Sabre, IBM and Edmunds.com Inc. now are already planning to make XHTML a critical component of their wireless e-business strategies by pilot testing the new standard even before it's supported on mobile devices or embedded into networks.
Most companies should begin to do the same, experts say. But, they warn, the schedule for actually rewriting existing Web and wireless applications should be determined by how much function is shared by a company's regular Web site and its wireless services, among other issues.
Still, experts say, just about any e-business with a wireless strategy should benefitââ,¬"and soonââ,¬"from XHTML, which the World Wide Web Consortium officially released in January 2000.
"There are a lot of benefits to be seen in XHTML, particularly the reduced need for intensive testing with every browser device you support," said Rich Waller, chief technology officer for Microsoft Solutions at Cap Gemini Ernst & Young. "If you support several different devices as well as different browsers, you end up spending millions of dollars just trying to satisfy the various demands."
