Palm Cements Enterprise Strategy With IBM Pact

Under the arrangement unveiled last week between Palm's Solutions Group and IBM, Palm will feature the WebSphere framework in Palm M-class devices and in future handhelds based on the company's next operating system, OS 5. The WebSphere mobile product includes IBM's secure enterprise instant messaging solution, Domino e-mail and personal information manger, DB2 Everyplace and Tivoli agent.

"Palm's big problem is it hasn't made clear the message that it is a business solution," said Tom Teates, president of Pen Computing Solutions, Las Vegas. "This little marriage between Palm and IBM demonstrates that [Palm is very serious about the enterprise."

Teates, whose company develops mobile solutions for the Palm and Pocket PC platforms, said that 90 percent of his customers are still asking for Palm-based solutions over the Pocket PC, primarily because of Palm's low price point, long battery life and easy-to-use interface. Palm's ability to work natively with robust applications such as WebSphere helps cement the company's position with large enterprise accounts, he said.

While Teates emphasized an improvement in market perception for Palm, Mike Freeman, vice president of mobile at Lewis Center, Ohio-based Sarcom, noted the back-end capabilities now available for the Palm platform.

"Anytime mobile workers can share collaborative data against a large back end, that's a good thing," he said.

Another aspect of the agreement between Santa Clara, Calif.-based Palm and IBM was the inclusion of Palm's Reliable Transport technology. IBM has licensed the technology, which allows Palm devices to send and receive information over a variety of wireless networks, although IBM also offers its own wireless gateway server.

The Palm WebSphere framework will be available to solution provider partners and also will be sold direct to enterprise and SMB accounts by IBM, an IBM spokesman said. Terms of the agreement allow IBM's direct-sales force to resell the Palm handheld devices, he said.

Palm has been working to shore up its strategy and hone in on enterprise-class solutions in a tight market. The company's pact with IBM is its third enterprise-class strategic alliance following similar agreements with Siebel Systems, San Mateo, and McKesson, a San Francisco-based supplier of IT and care management products and services for the medical community.

Eric Benhamou, Palm's chairman and CEO, has promised the financial community that a total of four of these partnership agreements will be completed by the end of the summer but declined to name the fourth alliance.