One such initiative is the GSMA’s OneAPI project, of which Locatrix is a long-standing supporter. The OneAPI (“One” stands for Open Network Enablers) standard provides a baseline reference for HTTP/RESTful APIs to access core network services such as location, messaging and charging, and the GSMA’s AppGarage booth in Hall 7 at the Congress was a busy thoroughfare for interested operators and developers.

Locatrix was delighted to again be asked by the GSMA to support the program by running demonstrations on the booth, and gave hundreds of presentations to delegates of our Developer Portal solution, which provides an immediate application support program for network APIs.

Significantly, we also saw massive interest in our social shopfront solutions, as deployed by Telstra and other operators.  These, like all our hosted application services provide operators with a new engagement and promotional channel to their customers for services, content and other offers, producing numerous ARPU and retention benefits.

We’ve been busy since Barcelona fielding interest from operators in Asia and Europe for these solutions, and also preparing for new deployments. Please get in touch if you’d like to learn more about any of our OneAPI or social networking solutions for mobile operators.

Locatrix Product Analyst Reuben So said that interest in the OneAPI was strong throughout the event, with many operators and developers hearing about it through the WAC announcement, and wanting to hear more.

“We provided demos of our OneAPI-compliant application solutions, as well as our Developer Portal solution right throughout the two-day exhibition,” said So. “There was keen interest from both mobile developers who want to access operator enablers and of course from the operators themselves.”

Locatrix has been an active participant in the GSMA’s OneAPI project since early 2009, and has staged a proof-of-concept portal and OneAPI endpoint service at http://oneapi.locatrix.com throughout 2010.

“Leveraging our solutions is the most cost-effective way a mobile operator can provide OneAPI-compliant developer interfaces,” says Mark White, Locatrix CEO. “We can help mobile operators quickly engage their own developer communities, leveraging the long tail of Web 2.0 innovation in their regions.”

For more information on the Locatrix Developer portal, please visit our solution page or OneAPI pilot site.

Historically, providing developer-level access to any features of a mobile network has been tricky, to say the least. Even with the relevant service provisioning completed, you’re still stuck with a myriad of interfaces, standards, web protocols and security methods. And that’s just with one operator. As soon as you hit your second there’s usually a whole new set of enabler access methods to implement.

These difficulties have resulted in relatively few applications making use of mobile network APIs. Some operator groups – notably Telenor and Vodafone – have been piloting developer programs which generally formalize broader access to the various enablers (e.g. messaging, location, billing), but are still dependent on underlying platform technologies. (Orange, for example, exposes nearly 30 different APIs via their developer program!)

The GSMA’s OneAPI inititive is an attempt to revert this situation, and it is something we’re proudly supporting. Standing for Open Network Enablers, the OneAPI aims to bring network features to a much broader audience of Web and Web 2.0 developers. Practically speaking, it is a single API – REST and SOAP access methods are supported – through which developers can access services consistently across multiple operators. The project goal is to make it easy, safe, and beneficial for developers to utilise mobile capabilities in a far broader set of applications.

One of the OneAPI objectives is simplicity; it’s not trying to be a massive or overly-complex single platform that must be adopted by all. Instead it is a set of simple functions that will be accessible and friendly to any of the typical web development languages like Perl, PHP, Python and Java. A kind of mobile API for the masses, if you like.

Locatrix has recently deployed our reference implementation of the OneAPI at http://oneapi.locatrix.com and, being the intrepid former software engineer that I am, I set out today to create a mashup between the OneAPI, our favourite network operator, Chime – our social SMS solution, Google Latitude and the Locatrix XLF application service in a little PHP script. Proving that we do “eat our own dog food” (or “drink our own champagne” – with thanks to Kevin Smith), the code was built, tested and deployed in a couple of hours. By a distinctly former software developer!

The OneAPI initiative has the potential to change the way application developers think about mobile networks, and also to create genuine revenue opportunities for monetizing applications. If you’re interested in learning more about the OneAPI there’s some more material here, and I would welcome you to contact us if you’re a web developer interested in trying it out. Those in the Twitterverse can also follow the OneAPI account here, and you could also subscribe to our newsletter Position Update, which provides a wealth of location, mobile and social networking industry information each month.

Thanks for reading, and we now welcome you back to regular Twittering!