FIGURE A

Palm's Marina Levinson Click picture for a larger image.

DG: Please tell us about the role of the CIO (Chief Information Officer) at Palm and your areas of responsibility?

ML: I'm responsible for all global uses of information technology for Palm. That includes the infrastructure support as well as all key enterprise applications as well as innovative use of Palm mobile and wireless technology.

DG: At Palm itself or at your customers?

ML: Right now it's within Palm. But I think through this project, which we initially called Palm@Palm, it was a great opportunity for us to actually provide leadership to other enterprise customers in the areas of mobile and wireless computing and this is what's actually been recognized by CIO Magazine. As you all know we became a winner of their CIO-100 award.

DG: You said you were initially calling it Palm@Palm. Does this project now have a new name?

ML: Yes, we actually renamed it Palm@Enterprise. This is a reflection that this is not just an internal use of Palm technology. We created something that can be easily reproduced by other enterprise customers and as a result of that, we think that a better name for this particular initiative is Palm@Enterprise.

DG: So let's dive into the cool stuff. Tell us how you're using Palm handhelds in your enterprise.

ML: It actually started here early on, when I first came onboard as CIO in November 1999. At the time, Palm was very much perceived in the marketplace as truly a consumer product and one of the reasons I actually joined Palm was because I felt that there was a tremendous opportunity to use these technology products as business tools to improve productivity and really prove that this is not "gizmos and gadgets" anymore. They can be very relevant in the enterprise space.

DG: Oh, my lord, yes. The stories we've been writing about this stuff! Every time we talk to a customer or user of Palm computers, we discover how these things are being used in more and more amazing ways.

ML: We started in small way, we started with a clean sheet of paper and we started envisioning about how these technologies can be used to benefit the enterprise. As a result of that, we came up with a pretty unique approach which really marries the personal side of using the Palm device, the elegance, the personalization, the ease of use, with an enterprise industrial-strength solution providing end-to-end security that enterprises require--providing access to enterprise business applications, providing access to corporate email and also being able to use those devices to access any site on the Internet or an intranet.