Now I know I go on and on and on about all of the cool iPhone app development that happens around these parts. At times, I even go so far as claiming we’re the de facto hub of that kind of stuff. But that’s not the only iPhone work that’s talking place around here. I mean, someone has to provide the underlying infrastructure that makes all of this cool stuff work, right?
Right. And that’s what the folks at Portland-based Urban Airship are doing. Providing the plumbing that makes those little iPhone apps as cool as they can be.
You see, with the launch of iPhone OS 3.0, applications got some new functionality—like push notifications which allow apps to send messages to and among users and update that little number badge and stuff. That’s cool, right? Not so fast. Problem was, app developers had to have the code and infrastructure in place to make those things work. And that, my friend, was a lot of work.
That’s where Urban Airship came into the picture. They built the infrastructure so that the independent app developers didn’t have to do it. Now the iPhone app developers have the infrastructure they need without having to build and maintain it.
Well, turns out it’s not only the small shops that appreciate their service. Some big folks are taking notice of what Urban Airship is doing, too. And as such, they’ve developed some new functionality to support messaging on a massive scale. Introducing Urban Airship Priority Push Service.
Do you want to send out a batch messages to an entire stadium of people and have them all look at their phones at once? With Urban Airship Priority Push Service, you can. Priority Push provides you with a dedicated messaging queue along with the hot-standby infrastructure to make sure that your messages get to your customers as quickly as possible. Like with any of our services, it’s milliseconds, not seconds, every time at every message volume.
To support the new feature, Urban Airship has rolled out a revised pricing model and enhanced infrastructure that allows larger entities to pay for messages in bulk, allowing them to “budget for growth and deal with unexpected bursts.”
It’s like the FedEx of push notifications.
All in all, this is good news for the young company who continues to rack up clients—and clearly is attracting the interest of larger clients, as well. And that smells like opportunity. In other words, while the company remains committed to helping the small and independent developers, that doesn’t mean they can’t help the bigger entities at the same time.
For more details and pricing, see Urban Airship Priority Push. For more information on the company, visit Urban Airship.
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[…] When you absolutely, positively need to push millions of iPhone messages in milliseconds: Urban Airs… (3) […]
@Bryan If iLime or PushIO relocate to the Portland area, I’d be more than happy to cover them. I only focus on companies and products that reside in the Silicon Forest. 😉
I’ve been researching the different companies that provide the infrastructure to support push notification and noticed that Silicon Florist seems to only cover Urban Airship, never mentioning the other options like iLime or PushIO (both which appeared at 360iDev).
Has anyone done a comparison of these services to identify the differences?
Someone should tell Skype to hook up with Urban Airship and get push going on their iPhone app. A guy can dream, right?