Push Technology targetting travel with its ‘turbo-charge for apps’ solution

A technology provider that has developed a “turbo-charge for apps” that powers mobile share dealing and spot betting is targeting travel.

A technology provider that has developed a “turbo-charge for apps” that powers mobile share dealing and spot betting is targeting travel.

Push Technology’s software when integrated into apps allows a much quicker flow of real-time information to the user.

It claims to overcome the problem of slow network speeds or devices to help eradicate buffering and delivers timely information more efficiently and cost-effectively.

Lee Cottle, vice-president and global head of sales, said this is increasingly important as travel firms battle it out to become the mobile travel concierge in people’s pockets.

“Fundamentally the internet was never designed to deliver data it was designed to move files around, not to stream real time data. We have got over that,” he said.

Push’s Diffusion technology overcomes data bottlenecks by updating only relevant information based on what has changed, or relevant data to the users’ circumstances.

As well as offering travel update services, the ability to deliver more personalised advertising messages to mobile users is an increasing priority in travel.

Cottle said Push has the ability to service 15 million communications a second and more than some cloud providers’ entire infrastructure in one year.

It has seen particular uptake in the worlds of financial services and gaming where rapid updating of information is vital for share trading and in-game betting.

“There are two reasons for getting involved in the travel industry,” said Cottle. “One is businesses have a problem with scale.

“When you build an app you build it for potentially millions of users, not just thousands, and more and more it’s about the timeliness of information.

“The other reason is firms want to change their business model to provide the ‘dream app’ and they come up with a great idea. The problem is they want it to work in the moment.”

Applications for Push Technology include the ability to immediately adapt digital signage, in airports for instance, based on mobile data telling you who is in the vicinity.

Airline cabin crew are also using real time information provided via applications, even maintenance crews are replacing paper manuals with updatable tablet devices.

“There are a whole bunch of things we are getting involved in to do with the movement of timely information over reliable networks,” Cottle said.

“Travel applications need to be aware of where you are, how fast you are travelling, what your next connection point is and to get that information to you over a network that’s up and down.

“We send information over the fastest protocol that’s available at any one time and that supports the data.

“Today we all live in the moment, we all get frustrated if we do not get the information we need right here, right now.

“Data is now currency for us to make important decisions about what to do next.

“A lot of people focus on the usability of the app to make it really simple for people to use and intuitive.

“But when they build these applications they are still using the same methods they used to use when building websites. In the mobile world you cannot do that.

“A mobile device can only process one thing at a time. When you open up a connection you want to be able to send data so that it can be unpacked and rendered quickly on screen.

“To do that you send smaller messages and our technology allows you to do that. There’s no point sending all web page information because you have smaller real estate on a mobile.”

Push Technology claims to see its clients reducing their bandwidth usage by 95% and hardware infrastructure by 80%.

Cottle also said apps integrating Diffusion come to market on average three months earlier than those that don’t.