Companies looking to wirelessly enable their back-office systems are getting more help these days.
Existing system integrators are adding wireless support to their business and new integrators are emerging to focus specifically on wireless solutions.
Angelbeat Inc. is a system integrator and design firm that does research, strategy and development work for corporate clients looking to put together wireless solutions.
“We want to be the leading provider of mobile solutions, primarily for enterprise applications,” said Angelbeat founder Ron Gerber, also its chairman, president and chief executive officer. “We want to help corporations mobilize their systems.”
The company formed at the end of last year. Gerber was then head of Gerber & Co., which did general consulting to telecom firms and some merger and acquisition work for smaller system integrators. He combined these two activities to form Angelbeat.
Based in New York, the firm remains relatively small, but is making a big noise. The company has launched an aggressive educational campaign to get its name out.
It first created a newsletter called the_angel_beat in April, which has since migrated to become a special Untethered advertising section for The New York Times after just one issue. The first of these were published this month, with three more planned throughout the year.
Angelbeat also hosts one-day events called Untethered Conferences, drawing speakers such as America Online Wireless’ President Dennis Patrick, as well as others from Motorola Inc., Nextel Communications Inc., Palm Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., i3 Mobile and GoAmerica.
Finally, the company holds weekly training sessions for corporate executives to learn about wireless Internet options and technologies.
Gerber said the strategy is to use these events as a way to promote the company.
“All this is being done not because we are a conference company but for people to be aware of us and recognizes us as a top leader in this field,” he said. “We try to make [the conferences] very interactive. We try to get away from wireless people talking to other wireless people about how great wireless is. Instead, we address how to talk to perspective customers.”
Eventually, Gerber hopes to concentrate Angelbeat’s activities on system integration and design. Central to this is what Gerber called the Angelbeat Mobilization Methodology, or AM2-the philosophical approach applied to all projects.
First, the company determines what application clients want to be made mobile, be it intranet applications or Internet connectivity. It then determines for whom the information is being made mobile-employees, other companies or consumers. Then there is the service itself-messaging, synchronization, location-based services, etc. Finally, Angelbeat ties the service back to the existing IT interface.
“We think that’s an extremely important mindset,” Gerber said. Many companies in the early Internet era made the mistake of launching Web sites not linked to legacy systems, he said, which should not be repeated.
“No one wants to have a third redundant or duplicative system. We use the AM2 philosophy to tie any mobile initiative to the customer’s existing infrastructure.”
Angelbeat has several partners that offer the technology and software needed in the solutions Angelbeat helps design-such as Softura, Pumatech and WebLink Wireless-but Gerber insists the company will draw from any company’s products to ensure it finds the best products needed for the system it is creating.
