Science & Technology

C&W Optus to Support Enterprise-Grade Wireless Applications

Edited by Joshua Smith - July 16th, 2001

Microsoft and QUALCOMM-owned Wireless Knowledge, Inc. today announced it is joining forces with Cable & Wireless Optus (ASX:CWO), the country's second-largest mobile carrier, to jointly market and sell Wireless Knowledge's enterprise-grade packaged applications for mobile business.

Under the terms of the agreement, Optus will market and resell Workstyle™ to its installed corporate customer base as a bundled offering with Optus WAP and GPRS services.

In addition, Optus will use the enterprise solution to mobilize its own work force by connecting employees to corporate e-mail, calendar and contacts from any Internet-enabled device.

"Workstyle offers our mobile professionals and enterprise customers a proven and compelling wireless-data-access solution," said Finola Thompson, director mobile Internet & data, Optus. "Subscribers gain a competitive advantage by remaining connected to their critical corporate data via any Optus GPRS-enabled device."

"The Australian market is asking for mobile-business solutions that can improve productivity and speed collaboration," said Harry Schultz, vice president global sales and services for Wireless Knowledge.

Wireless Knowledge's Workstyle provides business users with mobile access to e-mail, calendar and contacts from any Internet-enabled device, such as mobile phones, PDAs and wired or wireless laptops. The company's Anystyle™ software extends those capabilities to wireless devices with offline storage, such as RIM handhelds, Palms, and Pocket PCs.

Echo™, a high-performance mobile enablement engine, dramatically simplifies the process of creating mobile versions of either new or existing Web-based applications -- rendering information from other strategic applications, such as CRM, ERP, supply chain, or even proprietary applications, appropriately for the device making the request.

Optus will commence selling Wireless Knowledge mobile-business solutions this month and will distribute through its existing fulfillment channel.