Peramon links data to mobiles

Available now, Peramon Technology's TheMobilizer Application Generator is aimed at mobile workers such as sales staff who need to place sales information directly into enterprise databases.

TheMobilizer Application Generator can connect to a variety of data sources, including JDBC, XML, Soap and HTML. Also provided is a Java application programming interface (API) that can be customised to work with various corporate databases. On the client side, WAP or standard Web browsers are supported.

Peramon research and development director John Kell said one of TheMobilizer's strengths is that IT staff can set it up quickly. "For one of our early customers, the actual implementation of the technology took two days," he said. "It provides a cost-effective way of extending business applications access to anywhere in the world."

Hewlett-Packard distributor Westcoast has been piloting the product. It required mobile access to its AS/400-based enterprise resource planning system to support its sales consultants on the road, to help them to close deals on the spot. "Accessing real business applications on the move was a massive leap forward for us," said Richard Jones, IT director at Westcoast. "It's like the advent of the fax machine in terms of productivity increases and making our job easier."

While it supports a variety of data sources, TheMobilizer also enables a wide range of mobile phones and PDAs to link to back-office database systems, according to Peramon. The firm demonstrated its software pulling data from a SQL database and delivering it to a GPRS-enabled Nokia phone handset and a Trium Mondo Pocket PC-based smartphone.

TheMobilizer runs on a server with at least 256MB memory, and supports Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Solaris, HP-UX or Linux. Licences cost £2,500 + VAT for 10 users, £10,000 + VAT for 100.

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