DG: How does the role connect to the decision making process? Is it something where all salespeople are considered a certain kind of role and, therefore, have certain kinds of tools?

HB: Typically, within the organization we have your salesperson assigned to a salesperson role at one level and your sales manager assigned to a sales manager role. It varies by organization. It's customizable. But, what it allows us to do is, via this whole role-based concept, is if one new application needs to be assigned to our salespeople out in the field, we can just add it in one place in our system, and it would then roll out to all the different users and devices.

DG: Sounds really powerful.

HB: Really powerful, one-stop shopping, one place to make a change. And, each user still has the ability to customize and personalize to his own preferences.

DG: Is this something that's off the shelf, or is there a lot of customization or special programs that need to be built for the Palm device?

HB: Basically, as long as they have our latest version of the Workplace platform, which at the moment is Workplace 2.11 and ITS (Internet Transaction Server), which is our Web-server and transaction server 4.6d, we have the mobile access as standard to the Palm OS platform. It would just be a matter of generating the PQA specific for that role. Because once the customization is done, the PQA, being the start page on the device to access the Mobile Workplace, needs to be specific for that.

DG: Is that something that the software does?

HB: It's something that the software does. There's not a lot of customization that needs to be done. There's no third party software needed. It's all standard, out-of-the-box.

DG: Wow, that's pretty powerful. One of the things I noticed about SAP is a lot of discussion about inter-enterprise computing. Can you define inter-enterprise computing and how it applies to mobile devices?

HB: SAP is really about business cooperation between the different functional areas. One of the things we talked about early was how we integrated the processes between finance and purchasing and inventory. That collaboration really enabled us to take the lead within the enterprise software space. As we moved forward, we've been able to expand upon that, so that now it's not just a matter of "Can I do this within my own corporation?" but, "Why wouldn't I be able to when I generate and run my inventory requirements? Shouldn't I be able to pass those on directly to my suppliers?"

Via our Web platform, we can do that, today, with other businesses. And, rather than have all the different human interaction that was required years ago of the, "Here's all our requirements; let's FAX it out to ten different suppliers," variety, to see who can actually deliver us the product, our systems can be tied together through all these different enterprises. The requirements feed directly into my suppliers' systems and downhill from supplier to supplier, so that we have a complete circle of collaboration between all these different enterprises. As we extend out and take that out to the mobile device, what we're doing and what we're seeing today are a few different things. We have customers that are using that portal that I've talked about as an internal portal with the roles, or as an external facing portal. It's their Web site.