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Foehn goes mobile; not just with mobile phones

An interesting approach to "mobile" data would be one which didn't insist that all your Web Services got pushed out to a single device.

Sirenic calls this "intelligent mobile and wireless solutions," and allows all office communications to be accessed over whatever media you have, from landline phone to pocket wireless PC - a concept which it says has won it acontract to supply Foehn ltd, a leading European IT telecoms consultancy, with the Sirenic "Relevance Server" application.

The solution "will provide the team with access to their business critical information while out of the office." This includes access to prioritised emails, PIM information and newsfeeds as well Foehn's internal business process applications.

Gillan Ward, Business Director Foehn Ltd believes the company can quantify the benefits. "The nature of our Pan European business requires a large number of staff to be off-site for long periods of time. We spend a lot of time thinking about how we can maintain, if not improve our consultants' productivity during this time. Following our successful trial of the Sirenic Relevance Server product we estimate that its deployment adds about 50 additional minutes of productive time per employee per day. This should save Foehn an additional 24 days a year per person."

Foehn claims to have looked at a number of solution claims within this space. "For us, a major advantage of the Sirenic product is the fact that we do not have to re-invest in costly devices and equipment upgrades," said Gillan. This, the consultancy predicts, will allow them to scale the solution throughout the organisation enabling everyone mobile to benefit from the demand for information.

"Sirenic delivers information to any device, from a plain old telephone to a wireless PDA. This enables us to capitalise on additional up-selling opportunities because our consultants always have access to the most pertinent information when they need it through the delivery of prioritised, relevant and client specific information. It also allows us access all the information we need when behind the client firewall."

The product isn't, in itself, a full Web Services package - although the term appears to be pretty badly defined in the market right now. But Foehn consults for several European network operators, and the Sirenic product "will provide remote access to our business critical information including emails, in-house systems and newsfeeds," says the official announcement.

Sirenic, naturally, is ebullient: "We are delighted that Foehn ltd has decided to deploy our product across its mobile workforce. Their decision was based on the back of a successful trial - and given the nature of their business, our software will give them a return on investment payback of less than 20 days," said Russell Grahame, VP global sales and marketing, Sirenic.

"Instead of having relatively long periods of time to contemplate and assimilate information, the mobile worker has to make decisions quickly. To have a truly productive and empowered mobile workforce, it is critical that the mobile data solution address the relevance and priority of user information, not simply the delivery."

Sirenic technology partners are: Oracle, Screaming Media, The Carphone Warehouse, OneSource and AFXpress.