NEW YORK-Despite the hope and hype around consumer and corporate use, vertical applications remain today’s stronghold for wireless data, said Jeffrey Schlesinger, wireless technology analyst for UBS Warburg.
Recognizing this fact, many large and small companies have made a foray into the field-force automation arena, but few have succeeded so far.
“Consumer is not happening yet and corporate has yet to take off, but vertical is happening. MDSI is a pioneer in vertical and has ways to leverage its expertise,” he said to introduce the company at the investment bank’s recent “Global Telecom” conference.
MDSI Mobile Data Solutions Inc., headquartered in Richmond, British Columbia, began operations in 1979 and was later acquired by Motorola Inc. In 1993, Motorola sold the software portion of the business to several of the original company’s founders, according to Robert G. Cruikshank, president and chief operating officer.
“Our competition is in fragments. For utilities, it is companies like Imedion and M3. For telcos, Telcordia is our biggest competitor, and we just beat them in Australia with Optus,” he said.
MDSI, which has offices in Chicago, Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Cambridge, England, also counts Norway’s Telenor as a customer.
“In commercial field service, there are (other) companies like Siebel (Systems), Oracle and PeopleSoft. Some of the CRM (customer relationship management) companies have tried to move into field-force automation. They haven’t been successful, which is why you see companies like Siebel seeking us out as partners.”
Managing a mobile work force, particularly for large enterprises, is far more difficult than it might at first appear.
“A lot of people don’t understand how complex this is when you do it in a wireless environment, coupled with far from the highest degree of computer literacy among field-force workers and the need to sync back immediately after a break in coverage,” Cruikshank said.
In response to requests by corporate customers to make things even more simple for them and their mobile workers, MDSI is working on two fronts. It is moving away from customized solution sets to ones based on templates, which can more easily be scaled upward to meet increasing demands on the system.
“We are also doing a lot of work around voice XML, the voice interface. If you think about it, dial tone is going the way of the dodo bird, and we’re all going to start talking to portals.”
MDSI is working with a few large carrier customers, including AT&T Wireless Services, on “the final stages of the new R7 platform, our next-generation product,” Cruikshank said.
The company also recently entered the insurance market, providing claims adjusters for the first time with wireless connectivity not dependent on laptop computers for scheduling, dispatch and report filing.
“Our wireless bundles are a one-stop-shop for mobile applications, devices, gateways and airtime,” he said.
Dealing with “big, challenging” enterprise customers, like utilities and large telecommunications operators, provides MDSI with “a large and good revenue model from licenses and service implementations, but it’s also a lumpy one,” Cruikshank said.
To balance out the ebbs and flows of the “big E enterprise” marketplace, which MDSI estimates has a $3 billion worldwide revenue potential, the company recently entered the “little e enterprise” market, he added.
Earlier this year, MDSI acquired St. Louis-based Connectria, a wireless application service provider with a hosting engine geared for mobile and fixed wireless electronic commerce and logistics.
“With our entry into e-service, we like the fact of a transactions-based revenue stream,” Cruikshank said.
“E-business and e-service are limitless and will grow as the Internet and wireless penetration increase.”
