Keynote and France's Zandan Announce Joint Product Development and Marketing Partnership
Paris (ots/PRNewswire)
- Worldwide Marketing and Development Partnership Provides Unique Mobile Data Service Testing Solution and High Fidelity Insight into End- User Experience
- Testing and Validation of Mobile Application Performance for Over 750 Handsets
- Keynote Will Embed Zandan Software in Future Wireless Performance Management Services
- Partnership Extends Keynote and Zandan's Mobile Performance and Testing Services and Includes Reciprocal Joint Distribution in United States and Europe
Keynote Systems (Nasdaq "KEYN"), the worldwide leader in e-business performance management services, today announced a global marketing and development partnership with Zandan, a pioneer in mobile telephone data services and a leading European supplier of mobile user-experience testing, monitoring and benchmarking services. The unique partnership combines the world's largest geographically distributed infrastructure for measuring the performance of real end user handsets, from Keynote, with the world's largest database which simulates all the features of more than 750 mobile handsets, from Zandan, to provide customers with the first true mobile service level management performance and testing solution.
The combined solution will allow customers for the first time to easily test and assure the performance and quality of their mobile applications on any handset from multiple geographic locations around the world in a cost effective and easy to implement manner. Customers will now have worldwide access to the most comprehensive automated solutions for accomplishing mobile data testing and high fidelity measurement solutions from both companies.
Under the agreement, Keynote will partner with Zandan to assist mobile operators and content providers to automate testing and certify content and applications on the latest mobile handsets introduced by manufacturers. Keynote's market leading Wireless Perspective(R) measurement and monitoring solution will now be widely available and supported by Zandan throughout Europe to provide ongoing 24/7 benchmarking and monitoring of key mobile services from the end-user perspective to mobile operators, mobile service providers and mobile enterprises. Wireless Perspective is the only performance monitoring solution available on the market using actual end user handsets to measure the end-to-end performance of any service available on a mobile handset, including Push To Talk (PTT) and Instant Messaging (IM), for all major wireless networks in the US and Europe.
As an embedded component of a future version of Keynote Wireless Perspective, Zandan's testing software will help customers understand the end user experience for users running a wide variety of applications using their mobile handset including complex WAP transactions, SMS, MMS, Ring tone download and Java-based applications such as email and games. When Zandan's test software is embedded in the Keynote solution, mobile operators and content providers will have the ability to validate their services against actual mobile handset profiles for over 750 mobile devices - including SmartPhones, RIM Blackberry and PDA-based devices such as the Palm Treo - assuring a high quality experience for all potential customers. All tests can be done from the perspective of any end user accessing one of the many applications provided on a specific handset and which the application is meant to support.
Quality is a decisive element in the adoption and success of these services and one of the primary purchasing motivations for customers. Each handset has unique attributes such as screen size, color palette and character set support, and the gateways and centers owned by mobile operators support different session and transport protocols. Because of these differences in handsets, servers and networks, content providers must test and validate that their applications work correctly in such environments.
Zandan develops software solutions and services for key players in the mobile Internet market including mobile operators and large content providers which enhance customer satisfaction, and increase revenue from data services for operators by providing more user-friendly services. The ability of Zandan software to emulate almost any handset a customer can use, and to automate multiple tests, dramatically lowers the cost of testing, improves customer satisfaction, reduces complaints and speeds resolution of problems. This serves to increase the adoption of mobile services by the enterprise and consumers, thereby increasing revenues and decreasing churn.
"Keynote's partnership with Zandan adds important comprehensive services to fully validate mobile content availability and also extends Keynote's reach into Europe," said Arnold Waldstein, vice president of marketing and business development at Keynote. "The joint product development partnership allows Keynote to provide a flexible and cost- effective solution for detailed testing of new mobile content services against any existing mobile handset profiles, assuring that what is delivered to the customer meets expectations. Our alliance with Zandan supports Keynote's goal of providing customers with the most comprehensive solutions available to assure end user satisfaction, attain their business objectives and set realistic service level management goals."
"Offering Keynote's world class wireless performance monitoring services as part of our overall solution set will immediately increase the breadth of value-added services Zandan is able to deliver to its European customers." said Philippe de la Gardette, CEO of Zandan. "This partnership is recognition of the uniqueness of our technologies and the breadth of our testing capabilities."
Market Magic Research, a UK based mobile research company, estimates that the total market for mobile data services was US $75 billion in 2003 noting that, "Mobile applications face a much bigger challenge being well executed than traditional Internet applications."
According to a recent article in the Financial Times, "In the 2G world it was essentially network call quality that differentiated one mobile operator from another. In the new (3G) world, operators believe they will be able to score valuable points with their customers by having the most exciting and enticing services available, via easy to use wireless portals. Almost a third of [European] mobile users switch networks every year. The operators' hope is that user loyalty transfers from the handset to operator- branded services that run on the device."
Together, Keynote and Zandan will deliver to the mobile industry a complete wireless solution for Service Level Management (SLM). Keynote's SLM services deliver the industry's most comprehensive end-to-end operational monitoring and root cause diagnostics solution for e-business applications at the lowest total cost of ownership, especially when compared to complex and costly software solutions.
About Keynote
Founded in 1995, Keynote Systems (Nasdaq "KEYN"), The Internet Performance Authority(R), is the worldwide leader in e-business performance management services. Over 2,100 corporate IT and marketing departments and 20,000 individual subscribers rely on Keynote's growing range of measurement and monitoring, service level and customer experience management services to improve e-business performance by reducing costs, improving customer satisfaction and increasing profitability.
Keynote is viewed as The Internet Performance Authority due to the company's global infrastructure of over 1,600 measurement computers in more than 50 cities worldwide that capture and store on a daily basis over 60 million Internet performance measurements, frequent media citations quoting Keynote's Web performance data and analysis, the company's market-leading Web performance indices for vertical markets and leading customer research that provides critical business insight into online customer experiences, industry trends and competitive Web strategies.
Keynote Systems, Inc. is headquartered in San Mateo, California and can be reached at www.keynote.com or by handset in the US at +1-650-403-2400.
About Zandan
ZANDAN (www.ZANDAN.com) is emerging as the market leader in providing Mobile-Customer Experience Management, The Company's heritage in comprehensive WAP portal design, handset profile knowledge and enterprise- wide testing software provides the foundation necessary to deliver the world's most sophisticated technologies for End-to-End QoS of mobile internet.
The M-Viewer(TM) family of products represents an important technological breakthrough for testing and validation, monitoring and benchmarking assessments of any mobile data services. M-Viewer has unique distributed software architecture for fully automated, simultaneous testing of numerous services and/or networks using multiple simulation robots and aggregating results in one central server before broadcasting ad-hoc Web- based reports to targeted audiences.
M-Viewer's unmatched architecture, available as software tools or through DataSolution(TM) a family of services for performance, availability and content quality validation, allows rapid deployment in large, complex delivery infrastructures, enabling carriers, content and service providers and corporations to run their business the way they want to, fully assured that their consumers, customers and employees will get the best experience possible.
Since its formation in Paris, France in 2000, at the early days of WAP, the uniqueness of the ZANDAN's expertise and technologies and the breadth of its testing capabilities have been recognized worldwide. ZANDAN was among the first to see that WAP technologies and portals are essential for m-business success.
Keynote, The Internet Performance Authority and Perspective are registered trademarks of Keynote Systems, Inc. Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. (c) 2004 Keynote Systems, Inc.
PARIS, January 11 /PRNewswire/ --
Editorial Contacts: Stephanie Kuss, Zandan, +33-1-55-77-01-20, Stephanie.kuss@zandan.com
Contact:
Editorial Contacts: Stephanie Kuss, Zandan, +33-1-55-77-01-20,
Stephanie.kuss@zandan.com