IBM's Wireless Push

Speaking with CRN at the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association fall conference here last week, Adel Al-Saleh, general manager of Global Wireless E-Business at IBM, said mobile wireless products are maturing to the point where it is feasible to push the technology to IBM's solution provider partners.

"In the past, [mobile wireless required a lot of custom integration, and so it wasn't the right time to put these kinds of products into the channel," he said.

>> IBM plans to emphasize two hot vertical markets: field-force automation and sales-force automation.

IBM plans to release a new version of its WebSphere Everyplace Access middleware application in the first quarter that will be easier to install and will support more mobile devices, Al-Saleh said. The software will be teamed with Everyplace Wireless Gateway, which provides connectivity between 802.11 and wireless WAN networks. IBM plans to provide its WebSphere partners with additional toolkits and training to help push wireless solutions, he said.

Paul Giobbi, president of Zumasys, a Lake Forest, Calif.-based solution provider, said the best way for IBM to evangelize wireless is to give its partners demonstration products.

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"They should give every one of their partners a wireless modem and a free wirelesss account," Giobbi said. "The best sales tools is to be able to demonstrate this stuff to customers."

IBM plans to emphasize two hot vertical markets for mobile wireless: field-force automation and sales-force automation, Al-Saleh said.

Also at the show, IBM disclosed an expanded agreement with Hackensack, N.J.-based wireless services aggregator GoAmerica to provide a platform that VARs can use to sell activation to their customers.

As part of the agreement, GoAmerica will integrate a wireless PIM and e-mail service with IBM's WebSphere Everyplace Access product. This will give solution providers a platform for creating solutions that can push corporate data from the same applications to different wireless devices, based on the user's preference, the two companies said.