Almost exactly one year after becoming the first wireless carrier to introduce wireless Internet service to customers, Sprint PCS has introduced a new program to its Wireless Web service that caters to business clients.
The new suite is called Wireless Web for Business. The service is not aimed at individual business users, but rather to overall business systems. Sprint’s goal is to wirelessly enable corporate enterprise applications such as e-mail, intranets, directories and sales and service tools via Web-enabled Sprint PCS phones.
In this effort, Sprint formed alliances with such application providers and systems integrators as Lotus, Wireless Knowledge L.L.C., Siebel Systems, Sabre Holdings Corp. and PeopleSoft.
“Your company would have to have decided they want their work force to have wireless access to their applications,” explained Paul Reddick, vice president of product management and development at Sprint PCS.
Any company implementing the service would have one of Sprint’s solution partners do the integration work. For instance, Wireless Knowledge would provide its WorkStyle Server to wirelessly enable Microsoft Exchange servers. Lotus would do the same for those using its software. Other existing partners, like DataChannel, would help integrate deeper corporate systems to wirelessly enable sales-force information, directories and databases.
While several firms have sprung up lately offering similar services, even the option to outsource the hosting tasks, Sprint executives said they feel most businesses would rather turn to existing partners than to a newcomer.
“If I’m a corporate buyer, these are new areas for me and I want to go to familiar brands,” Reddick said, pointing to brands like Sprint or Siebel. “If some small company I have not heard of comes and claims they can do this, I’ve got to raise an eyebrow.”
Sprint has several large national business accounts for its wireless voice services, and it expects to upsell many of these to wireless Internet solutions.
“We’ve got a lot of corporate accounts,” Reddick said.”Our business side has grown 285 percent since the launch of the Wireless Web service in the last year. Obviously voice is a big key. With Wireless Web, we’ve been focused on consumer applications. Now, we’re just formalizing marketing it in a way that’s easier for business users.”
The Wireless Web Business service features a private network connection from the corporate network to Sprint’s network, which, later this year, would allow a custom link on the phone browser’s home page for employees to directly access their corporate information.
Sprint last week also unveiled new ways for wireless customers to connect to the Internet from their laptop or handheld computers using Sprint wireless solutions.
First, Sprint introduced a new wireless connection card kit so its phones may be used as wireless modems, connected to either a laptop or handheld. While Sprint phones had this capability before, the new card connection kit features a flash card that lets customers use the same connection kit for various devices. It also connects to a Type II PCMCIA slot on a computer, rather than the serial port.
Sprint also is providing new software for enhanced Internet connection when using the wireless phone as a modem. With new Dialer 2.0 software added to the laptop, the Sprint phone can be used as the Internet dialer, meaning users may connect directly to the Internet without going through an Internet service provider or entering user names and passwords.
With new compression software from BlueKite, connection and transmission speeds are at rates comparable to existing 56.6 kilobyte rates available on landline dial-in connections.
Second, Sprint and Sierra Wireless Inc. have jointly developed an AirCard 510 CDMA Wireless Web Modem specifically for the Sprint network, which also fits into a standard Type II PCMCIA slots for Microsoft Windows devices. The modem has its own phone number on Sprint’s network billed to the customer’s existing Sprint account.
This is Sierra Wireless’ first CDMA AirCard product. Past AirCards have been CDPD compatible.
