Microsoft Teams With Vodafone

Microsoft Corp. and voda- fone Group plc. last week announced a partnership aimed at driving mobile Web services and merging the worlds of the PC and mobile devices.

Microsoft Corp. and voda- fone Group plc. last week announced a partnership aimed at driving mobile Web services and merging the worlds of the PC and mobile devices.

At the International Telecommunications Union Telecom World conference in Geneva, Switzerland, Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates and Ian Maxwell, group strategic relationship director for Vodafone, based in Newbury, England, united to deliver the companies plans to create Web services standards that will broaden opportunities for developers and mobile network operators.

Charles Fitzgerald, general manager of platform strategies at Microsoft, in Redmond, Wash., said mobile Web services will drive convergence of PC and mobile applications and services and deliver new integrated services. Right now, the two worlds are disparate, Fitzgerald said.

The Microsoft-Vodafone effort "is an opportunity to bring the PC and mobile worlds closer together," said Maxwell.

Among the key benefits of this partnership will be the ability of developers to more easily integrate mobile Web services, such as authentication, messaging, location and billing, into their applications, Maxwell said. These services have typically been in the realm of mobile devices.

Microsoft and Vodafone said they will deliver a road map of the Web services standards at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles this month. In addition, they will release a joint white paper at the conference.