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PALM'S WIRELESS STRATEGY
Palm's enterprise offerings move forward with recent deals
By Steve Niles
Over the past few months, Palm has made two important steps in the company's enterprise strategy to provide businesses with complete and easy-to-implement IT management solutions and to offer enterprise customers a secure, server-based messaging platform. On December 12, 2002, Palm, Inc. and ThinAirApps, Inc. announced that they had signed a definitive agreement for Palm to acquire ThinAirApps, a privately held, New York-based developer of software and applications enabling secure wireless access to corporate email and other critical enterprise data. This acquisition led to the development of the Palm i705 Enterprise Wireless Messaging Solution.
Then, on February 6, 2002, XcelleNet, Inc., a provider of management solutions for distributed enterprises, and Palm, Inc. announced a memorandum of understanding outlining their intention to work together to deliver management solutions to enterprise customers deploying the Palm i705 Enterprise Wireless Messaging Solution. The Palm i705 Enterprise Wireless Messaging Solution is discussed in some detail elsewhere in this issue of PalmPower's Enterprise Edition. For now, we'll take a closer look at these two strategic deals and what they mean for you, the enterprise customer.
ThinAirApps acquisition
ThinAirApps, Inc. (at http://www.thinairapps.com) has been a wireless software leader since their introduction of the industry's first multi-device behind-the-firewall wireless platform in 1999. ThinAirApps provides wireless groupware and enterprise data access solutions, such as Identicon DB, an infrastructure product that enables rapid development of secure, wireless, rich-client applications capable of interacting with any standard relational database. ThinAir technology is in use in over 130 enterprises worldwide.
Palm's acquisition of ThinAirApps was valued at 19 million dollars and was paid for with Palm common stock. The move marked a commitment by Palm's Solutions Group to offer enterprise customers a secure, server-based messaging platform and laid a foundation for future strategic relationships with enterprise application providers.
As an active licensee of ThinAirApps products, Palm's Solutions Group had a long-standing relationship with that company even before the acquisition. ThinAirApps groupware technology had allowed Palm employees in the United States to access various Microsoft Outlook functions on their wireless Palm VII handhelds, including calendar, email, contacts, tasks, and notes. It was also central to Palm's own behind-the-firewall email solution for employees and customers. In addition, Palm had been working with ThinAirApps throughout 2001 on the development of server technologies for Palm's next-generation, behind-the-firewall email and messaging solutions.
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