Swedish telecoms firm Ericsson has announced plans to become a one-stop shop for businesses wanting mobile access to data. The company has put together a suite of best-of-breed applications for its resellers to deploy, and said it offers firms the reassurance of long-term support.

Ericsson has assembled a suite of basic offerings that include push email, mobile customer relationship management (CRM) capabilities, device management systems, and a tool for mobile access to files on the corporate network.

Most of the modules are available now, except for Mobile Device Management, which is due later this quarter, and Mobile Document Manager, which will ship in the third quarter. The company is also offering "out of the box" Mobile Office services that telecoms carriers can deploy to smaller firms.

Many of the modules have been licensed from or developed in partnership with other vendors, Ericsson said. The push email Ericsson Mobile Organiser is based on Smartner's Duality product and so is a true push system offering up-to-date mail and calendar information.

Mobile Device Management uses technology from Intellisync's Mobile Suite, allowing administrators to deploy updates over the air and enforce security policies - for example to remotely wipe mislaid devices. The Mobile CRM application comes from Salesforce.com, but was co-developed with Ericsson. David Ekberg, Ericsson's director of Mobile Data Solutions, said his firm is well placed to serve as a one-stop shop for businesses wanting mobile applications, and would be able to continue support even if the original software became unavailable. "Ericsson has a long-term strategy to develop mobile applications," he added.

Ericsson's mobile applications are compatible with smartphones and wireless PDAs running the Symbian operating system and Microsoft's Windows Mobile platform.

The applications that have not been developed by Ericsson have been enhanced or adapted to integrate better with the rest of the suite, Ekberg said. For example, the forthcoming Mobile Document Manager will allow staff to browse and download files from the corporate network via a phone, and link to Ericsson Mobile Organiser to send files as email attachments.

Ekberg said that the cost of deploying its mobile applications would vary depending on each company's requirements, but that Ericsson expected it to be about 25 percent cheaper than deploying RIM's BlackBerry Enterprise Server for the same number of users.