Real businesses don’t survive on push email — MobileMonday Global: Industry News

^{Mobile email is passé} Real businesses don’t survive on push email

28 Apr 2005 at 18:59 GMT Timo Poropudas

“Mobile email is passé, and all operators are pushing it to consumers. Unfortunately, Personal Information Management (PIM), meaning email, calendar and contact list, is the most that mobile operators are willing to offer businesses,” says Mikko Suuntala of Finland-based Sofor Oy.

According to Suuntala operators don’t have a clue as to what to do when businesses need to connect their mobile workers to operative systems and databases. Suuntala should know since his task is to sell the business system connectivity service to telecom operators and ISP’s (also ASP’s) and system integrators.

Sofor has found more acceptance for its services im Asia and that’s where Suuntala is spending a third of his time. He is looking for partners who could sell Waplane mobile connectivity service.

The name itself is lifting some eyebrows since WAP is, in many circles, a synonym for breezy hyping, an over promising and under delivering technology failure. Evidently this poor image is disappearing.

Is WAP still alive?

“We had a tall stand in a Hong Kong exposition and Waplane name was pulling in mobile veterans” says Suuntala.

“Is WAP still alive,” they wondered.

For Sofor WAP is just a what its name implies, Wireless Access Protocol. It is a standardized method for delivering mobile content to screens of varying sizes.

Waplane is the technology Sofor uses to deliver content through its MobileServant platform.

Sofor was founded in 1991 and it has a long history of connecting Lotus Notes and Domino databases to outside systems.

MobileServant platform has the tested capability to talk to most common operative business databases. At the same time it supports all browsers and all IP-enabled mobile communication networks and it is able to set up protected VPN connections between the server and the mobile device.

“It takes only a few hours or days to extend operative systems to a mobile user base,” Suuntala says.

“The most difficult matter is for the customer to decide what data he wants to pipe into his mobile users’ terminals.”

In Finland Sofor sells its ASP directly to customers but that is not a very feasible way for a privately held smallish company to reach to global markets where partners are needed.

Finnish customers include the pizza chain Kotipizza. District managers of Kotipizza link with their mobile devices to the company’s Oracle database to get timely data on contracts and performance data of the franchising units they supervise.

Betting on mobile ASP

Another customer is Finland’s Slotmachine Association RAY that funds various cultural and sport organizations. RAY’s field inspectors need an real time access to customers status and data as well as RAY’s own multiple programs and projects. On the road they also need to read and update their own emails and calendars and company phonebook.

“It took only three days to mobilize RAY’s systems. We made no changes to existing systems,” Suuntala says. Waplane makes use of the connector-modules that are a part of most databases.

One of the main selling points for the Waplane service is the fact that a customer does not need to set up its own mobile infrastructure or gateways, alter its operative databases or install any software in its mobile handsets. Waplane delivers contents to the mobile device’s native browser. Using the browser has an added benefit of not storing any operative data on the handset itself.