A huge number of wireless companies hope to make money by helping businesses replace their cumbersome cords and wires with the freedom of wavelength-the hot phrase lately seems to be “enabling the wireless work force.”
The market for creating these wireless systems is “fairly big, and it’s lucrative,” said Tole Hart, senior analyst for Dataquest/Gartner. Mobile workers, generally 20 percent of a work force, “are the productive element in the work force. They like it (wireless systems) because it’s more efficient.”
Most companies offer their wireless systems directly to businesses. The setup usually involves installing a synchronizing server and tying in several independent, wireless terminals. The process generally takes several weeks or months before it’s up and running. These wireless systems work, but business executives seem to be dubious about whether it is worth the time and expense involved in installing and learning to use one.
What businesses want is the fastest, easiest wireless system available.
“How do they wirelessly enable their applications and their Internet?” asked Bill Nguyen, president and founder of Seven.
That’s the question businesses are asking, Nguyen said, and he thinks Seven has the answer.
While most wireless companies-Aether Systems Inc., Air2Web Inc. and 724 Solutions Inc., to name a few-are marketing their wireless products and services to individual businesses, hoping to eventually become the standard, Seven is bypassing that approach and going one step-actually many steps-higher. Seven is selling its technology to carriers so that the carriers themselves can “enable the wireless work force.” And, according to Seven, a carrier-based wireless network can be set up instantly.
“Installing something at the company is incredibly difficult,” Nguyen said. But Seven bypasses that difficulty, he said. “The company doesn’t have to change anything.”
Seven announced itself last week at the 3GSM World Congress in France. And to bolster its launch, Seven managed to associate itself with some very big names.
The company is teaming with software giant Microsoft Corp. to integrate Microsoft’s Mobile Information Server into its network, a move scheduled to coincide with the server’s release in the first half of this year. The deal allows Seven to support the information server as well as services developed across Microsoft’s devices and .NET Enterprise Server products. Microsoft said its information server will work with the e-mail and calendar functions of Outlook, as well as corporate intranet resources like Windows 2000 Server Web-based applications.
Along with the Microsoft announcement, Seven also broke news of its first carrier customers, BT Cellnet and Genie, BT’s mobile Internet portal. BT Cellnet has 10 million voice customers and more than 1 million wireless Web users, while Genie boasts 2.8 million registrations on its Web and WAP portals.
Nguyen explained Seven’s offerings with an example from high-tech history: Companies used to physically update all the modems in all their computers to keep up with modem technology improvements. But the need for constant updating was eliminated when service providers began offering outside dialups. Seven will play a similar role, Nguyen said.
Seven said its technology allows carriers to offer value-added business services like secure wireless data access, business portal services, unified messaging and virtual private network access. Its open-standards approach lets application developers integrate voice, messaging, Web content, enterprise data and physical location for mobile workers. In addition, Seven said its technology is compatible across all devices and networks, including GSM, CDMA and 2.5- and third-generation technologies. The company’s products and services initially will be targeted at small and medium-sized businesses, Nguyen said.
Dataquest/Gartner’s Hart said Seven’s carrier-based approach is unique, and would likely provide a good market for carriers to expand into. However, Seven’s carrier customers would be entering uncharted waters.
“Carriers are not necessarily that great at selling solutions to businesses,” he said. “They don’t have a whole lot of experience.”
Hart said most carriers don’t really have the sales force in place to efficiently market Seven’s technology to businesses, and have a “huge learning curve” to overcome before they would be able to. He said carriers would most likely outsource the sales duties to other companies, such as wireless application services providers.
“In the short to immediate term, it certainly will be the wireless ASPs,” Hart said. However, he added, Seven’s approach “sounds like a good idea.”
Along with Seven’s recently announced big-name deals, it also boasts big-name funding and management. The company received $34 million in series A funding from venture capitalists Greylock and Ignition Corp., a company founded by software and Internet leaders that has so far been very selective in its investments.
Seven’s management includes Nguyen, who sold Onebox.com, now Openwave Systems, to Phone.com for $850 million. Other major players are Sandeep Khanna, a Java pioneer at Sun Microsystems, and Brad Silverberg, who helped with the massive growth of Microsoft.
