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Corporate wireless takes over AvantGo with Web Services edition

AvantGo has always been an end-user tool; it's been the way PDA owners can carry all the morning papers in their pockets, and has been the killer app for most pocket computer users. Now, it's going corporate.

For the next four months, AvantGo is giving away its brand new "M-Business Server Application Edition" product to corporate IT managers.

The trend of the year just has to be Web services; and in particular, web services pushed to handheld devices via wireless. But the business of plugging your PDA into the PC or the LAN remains the way most people will shift most data into their hand-helds, with wireless being used to update the day's information with urgent news.

"AvantGo M-Business Server 5.0 Application Edition brings the power of enterprise applications, XML web services and the Internet to mobile and wireless devices," reports the company.

AvantGo has been able to claim the backing of leading enterprises, such as McKesson Corporation, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Microsoft, Palm, Onyx Software, E.piphany, Plumtree Software, Arcadia and Telispark, who are supporting this powerful mobile solution "by working closely with AvantGo to ensure integration of AvantGo mobile solutions with their offerings."

In a sense, moves like this are playing "catch up" to pioneers like Information Builders, which have had sophisticated wireless push facilities for full-scale Web services for some time. However, the support from Microsoft is bound to be much higher profile, and represents a big "win" for AvantGo in its search for the corporate licence market. Hence the inclusion of XML references liberally sprinkled through the press release from AvantGo

Microsoft's response was particularly self-serving: "Microsoft has created the Pocket PC platform to meet specific enterprise needs: to protect data and leverage current standards and practices," said Scott Gode, director for the Mobility Group at Microsoft. "AvantGo's M-Business Server 5.0 Application Edition furthers those Pocket PC goals by enabling enterprises to quickly and efficiently take advantage of their existing investments to deliver valuable business applications to mobile devices."

By supporting XML web services, .NET and advanced web application development standards, including Dynamic HTML (DHTML), XML, CSS, DOM and JavaScript, the new product not only "brings feature-rich, web-based business applications, previously available only on desktop computers, to mobile devices," but hooks into Microsoft's new baby, the .Net framework.

However, the real beneficiary is likely to be Palm, which is lagging badly in the enterprise market. Tim Roper, senior director of business development, at Palm, Inc. said: "With this new release, AvantGo is enabling developers to create more compelling enterprise applications for Palm-branded handhelds with less effort. Support for the latest web development standards allows customers to develop sophisticated applications that take full advantage of the most advanced hardware capabilities available today on Palm handhelds."

AvantGo M-Business Server 5.0 Application Edition for developing robust mobile applications is now shipping for Pocket PC, and the company plans to ship Palm OS and RIM BlackBerry Wireless Handheld versions at the end of the month. At press time, it wasn't clear whether this would be the US version only of the BlackBerry, and our guess is that it won't apply to the European version at this stage.

As a special introductory offer, AvantGo is providing a free evaluation of AvantGo M-Business Server 5.0 Application Edition until September 1, 2002. For more information, please visit http://www.avantgo.com/mbustrial. For more information about purchasing AvantGo M-Business Server 5.0 Application Edition, please contact the company.