In a marked shift in strategy, Datalink.net unveiled a new business unit called Net2Wireless Turnkey Business Solutions, designed to provide business-to-business wireless extension services.
Originally, Datalink aimed its turnkey information services solution directly to wireless customers, sometimes through marketing agreements with carriers like SkyTel Inc. Customers of various paging or phone carriers would personalize their content portfolio with Datalink, which also would bill them.
According to Datalink’s Anthony LaPine, chairman and chief executive officer, this attempt at creating its own brand proved more difficult than expected.
“We found the customer acquisition cost, or branding, became extremely high,” he said. “We felt that was not a very attractive business.”
Datalink built a content delivery platform called XpressLink to deliver the Internet-based content it collected to different wireless networks. With the failure of its own branding strategy, LaPine said the company now will leverage this XpressLink platform to help established brands extend their content wirelessly.
“We rethought the business model and decided to maintain the existing base, but switch gears to business-to-business,” he said. “We will help wirelessly enable Web sites instead.”
The new group’s first customer is AuctionAnything.com, a Web site offering auction services. It implemented the platform so it may alert users on their wireless devices when pre-selected items come up for auction. This solution uses Net2Wireless’ Auction Engine.
Other products in the company’s enterprise business solutions suite include Wireless Bookmark, a Web-based messaging service; Content Engine, which distributes information from a company’s Web site to employees; and an Intranet Productivity Tool, which allows enterprise customers to customize wireless access to its intranet. It also provides billing and account management services.
LaPine said these services allow companies to extend their intranet or Internet-based information to both employees and customers on wireless devices by outsourcing the entire process to Datalink.
“What we really provide is a device-agnostic, protocol-agnostic and carrier-agnostic access to any wireless device,” he said. “The goal is to extend the Internet franchise to the wireless world.”
Datalink recently secured $10 million of funding through a private debt placement, which LaPine said would be used to “aggressively push these services.”
He said he expects to spin off the Net2Wireless unit into its own company at some point.
In the meantime, Datalink continues to sell its information services. The company resells its content to Arch Communications Group Inc., as well as several other resellers.
