Xybernaut Expands Into Wireless, Mobile

Xybernaut is working to tap a growing business need for wireless and mobile products and solutions by beefing up its channel program, which has attracted about 50 new partners over the past 18 months.

"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.