In the Media

Offerings from Haht Software, IBM, and others give mobile workers better data access

You can use wireless technology to get the latest sports scores on your cell phone or access an E-commerce Web site with your Palm Pilot. But wireless communication has limited usefulness when mobile workers need to access internal business applications and back-end systems that are usually hidden behind a company's firewall.

That's beginning to change. Vendors such as Haht Software, IBM, MobileSys, Multiactive Software, and ResQNet.com are rolling out systems and software packages designed to give mobile executives, field-sales, and customer-service specialists access to the data they need to serve customers better.

"We're in the early stage of this trend, which you can expect to accelerate quickly as companies seek simple ways to enable this access," says Sheryl Kingstone, a program manager at the Yankee Group. "We're getting lots of user inquiries asking how they can apply wireless to their corporate applications. They're taking this very seriously because they see the potential benefits."

Those benefits include saving time, boosting productivity, and increasing sales. FVC.com Inc., a Santa Clara, Calif., company that sells broadband Internet video equipment, sees wireless access to customer-relationship management data becoming mandatory for some types of mobile workers. "Getting the sales guy to sit down in front of the computer is not the way he works. But he does need data," says Mark Cowtan, VP of marketing for FVC.com. Now that data-customer background, order status, and service requests-can be delivered directly to a smart phone or other handheld computing device.

FVC.com is adopting wireless technology from front-office vendor Multiactive Software Inc. as part of the vendor's Entice CRM suite. FVC.com, which sells its equipment through direct and indirect channels, is using Multiactive to share sales and customer information with sales partners through personalized Web sites. In order for potential partners to gain access to the site, however, they first need to be approved by a salesperson. But salespeople are frequently on the road, and it can take them days to grant the access. That's not a good way to impress new partners. "If it takes us two or three days to respond, it looks as if we're asleep," Cowtan says.

The first phase of FVC.com's wireless push, to be completed in a few weeks, will let the company feed potential partner information via the Wireless Application Protocol to a cell phone; salespeople grant access by pressing a few buttons on their phones while riding in a car or waiting in line for a taxi. The company also plans to use Multiactive to gather order status and trouble-ticket information from back-end systems and pass them to a salesperson's phone. That way, the sales representative is armed when he or she walks into an account. "We don't want the person to get ambushed with a bunch of unresolved customer-service issues," Cowtan says.

MobileSys also offers server software that provides wireless access to corporate applications. One MobileSys customer plans to implement this capability to improve customer service. SiteLite Inc., which remotely monitors and services servers for clients, uses the software to provide wireless notification to let technical support specialists know when servers are experiencing problems such as becoming overloaded with traffic.

SiteLite built an application that collects information from software agents attached to the servers and uses MobileSys software to format and send alerts for the specific type of pager or cell phone used by the tech support personnel, says Jeff Pierek, president of the Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif., company. The MobileSys software lets technical personnel acknowledge their awareness of a server problem within 30 seconds on average, he says.

SiteLite is enhancing the application to let the tech staff, once notified of a problem, use handheld devices and cell phones with large screens to access information on customer systems and configurations so they can resolve the problem more quickly. What appealed to Pierek is the ability of MobileSys software and network to ensure that all pages and alerts are delivered to the wireless network service provider.

"In this business, we need guaranteed delivery because we can't afford to miss a single page," Pierek says. That's because many of the servers it monitors and supports power E-commerce Web sites or run critical applications.

IBM, meanwhile, is working to overcome the challenges of unreliable wireless service, a problem that has limited its use for enterprise applications. For example, a salesperson could enter a product order on a wireless device, only to lose the connection when wireless service cuts off under a bridge and then not know whether the transaction went through.

To solve that problem, IBM has introduced MQSeries Everyplace, a lightweight version of its transaction-processing middleware that runs on handheld devices. MQSeries Everyplace connects through a gateway on the wireless server to back-end applications.

Analysts say that MQSeries will add reliability to the wireless infrastructure. While wireless devices can be used to access data with simple queries to databases, they haven't been up to generating or receiving more important transactions such as product orders, invoices, or customer records because of the possibility of missed transactions.

"Wireless hasn't been ideal for businesses events and items that have to be processed in real time," says Mike Gilpin, an analyst at Giga Information Group. But MQSeries, with its message-queuing capabilities, makes sure that the transaction closes. If the network crashes or drops a connection, the transaction will be ready to go when the connection or the network is restored.

More users are implementing such systems. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer last week said it plans to equip its field sales force with Sprint PCS Internet-ready mobile phones so they can gain wireless access to real-time information stored in the entertainment company's SAP R/3 enterprise resource planning system. MGM will use software from Haht and Sprint's Wireless Web data services to enable sales reps to perform detailed order summary, access delivery information, and check order status from the Sprint PCS phones.

Also last week, ResQNet.com released ResQ/ME, a Java-based software package that provides wireless access to applications residing on IBM AS/400s and mainframes. It lets mobile workers with Palm personal digital assistants, Pocket PCs, Wireless Application Protocol phones, and Windows CE devices securely place orders and check inventory in real time. The vendor says the software requires no changes to the applications.

"My advice to top IT executives is to start immediately tracking, if not evaluating, products and services that provide wireless mobile access to business applications," says Daniel Briere, founder of consulting firm TeleChoice. "They represent a tremendous new opportunity to streamline and improve processes."

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