Xybernaut Expands Into Wireless, Mobile

"Customers are telling us there is a niche area between PDAs and laptops or tablets that no one is covering," said Michael Binko, vice president of corporate development at Xybernaut, a wearable and mobile device vendor based in Fairfax, Va.

The latest product from Xybernaut is the Atigo T, introduced last month at Comdex Las Vegas 2003. The Atigo T is an 8.4-inch, touch-screen 802.11b wireless panel with an embedded Windows XP operating system and built-in CompactFlash and PC Card slots. It is available now and pricing starts at $1,800, Binko said.

Anteon, a Fairfax-based solution provider focused on federal government clients, is one partner already working successfully with Xybernaut's products. For instance, Anteon is using Xybernaut's wearable Mobile Assistant V (MA V) product, an earlier sister product of the Atigo T, as part of a deployment for the San Francisco Office of Marine Safety at San Francisco Bay.

At the moment, Anteon is using an application with the MA V that includes an installed global positioning system and a Verizon broadband CDMA card tied to a high-end digital camera to take on-scene photos and transmit them in realtime to the command center.

"The edge here is that I can put a number of peripherals into what is essentially a Windows 2000 computer," said Steve West, manager of Homeland Security and Coast Guard operations at Anteon. "So it has a pretty extensive interface backbone, which PDAs do not."

Binko said Xybernaut is looking to translate the success of its base of 100 partners into a business model of more than 50 percent channel sales from 30 percent. Areas of partner recruitment include solution providers more horizontally focused in areas such as field-force automation, workflow or business process re-engineering.