AvantGo eyes corporate handheld market
After building a business helping individual companies bring their desktop software to handheld
devices, AvantGo is trying to offer a more generic approach.
On Monday, the company plans to announce it has started shipping AvantGo Mobile Sales, the
company's first packaged software aimed at helping corporate customers bring business functions
to handheld devices. Until now, AvantGo has sold only a single server program and worked with
each company to tailor the program for their particular needs.
Felix Lin, AvantGo's vice chairman, said that the idea to offer packaged software came after seeing
the similarities in much of the work AvantGo's corporate customers were doing.
"We've captured the elements
that are common to all of
them," Lin said. "It's not to say
they won't customize it further."
The program allows
handhelds to enter and
update information from a
number of sales force
automation programs,
including software from Onyx,
Oracle and Siebel Systems.
The AvantGo package
supports Research In Motion's
BlackBerry e-mail pagers as
well as handheld computers
using the Palm or Microsoft
Pocket PC operating systems.
The Mobile Sales software will
cost $65,000 for 100 users
and requires AvantGo's server software, which starts at $30,000.
AvantGo is best known for its consumer program that lets people download news and other
information to their handheld computer, but most of the company's revenue comes from its
business customers.
AvantGo is one of a number of companies looking to help businesses bring key desktop programs
to handheld computers. Palm had hoped to buy Extended Systems, one such company. After that
deal fell apart, Palm announced it would sell Extended Systems' software, and it struck a deal with
accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers to help sell to large businesses.
"I think it is something you will see more of," said Mike McGuire, an analyst at Gartner G2, a unit of
market researcher Gartner.
Many sales force automation companies already have their own plans to offer software access via
handhelds. Lin said the advantage of AvantGo's approach is that it can connect to more than one
program, augmenting sales data with, say, the customer's inventory information from another
program.
AvantGo plans eventually to offer programs for other business tasks, although the company has not
said which types of software it will offer next. Lin mentioned supply-chain management, logistics
and transportation as logical candidates.
"You can expect the types of applications we will do are those that are intrinsically mobile," Lin said.
But while the idea of using handhelds to do core business tasks is a hot topic these days,
companies appear to be taking their time before moving their systems to such gadgets, said
Charul Vyas, an analyst at IDC. Among the hurdles is the slow speed of today's wireless networks.
"I think you are slowly beginning to see adoption," Vyas said. "I don't think its there yet in terms of
massive deployments, but I think it is something that is on the minds of IT managers."
