In yet another paging industry alliance aimed at wirelessly enabling personal digital assistants, Glenayre Technologies Inc.’s Wireless Access Group said it plans to partner with JP Systems Inc. to jointly develop and market wireless communications solutions.
The partnership will pair the Wireless Access Group’s two-way messaging technology with JP Systems’ user interface software. Additionally, Gary Hermansen, president and general manager of the Glenayre unit, was elected to JP Systems’ board of directors.
Initially, the partnership will revolve around the joint marketing of JP Systems’ BeamLink and InfoBeam services, both of which use the AccessLink II two-way pager to deliver e-mail and Internet-based information services to PDAs.
BeamLink and InfoBeam use Glenayre pagers as a wireless modem for PDAs, linking the two devices via their infrared ports. BeamLink allows users of Palm Computing Inc.-enabled devices to transmit and receive e-mail and pages, while InfoBeam provides access to Internet-based information services like news, sports, travel updates and weather information. The InfoBeam product also is available for Windows CE-based devices.
Other InfoBeam services include a wireless in-store comparison shopping solution from BarPoint.com Inc. With it, shoppers can scan UPC barcodes on retail products and wirelessly connect to an Internet-based database to compare the price to that of similar products.
Andy Tarzon, director of mobile products at JP Systems, said because the InfoBeam and BeamLink solutions rely on the Glenayre pager, a formal agreement between the hardware and software providers was necessary to assure potential customers that the solution was complete.
“We have technologies dependent on their devices,” he said. “Glenayre has the hardware, and JP Systems has the software. Together, this partnership is saying that we have the means to provide the wireless connectivity for all your devices.”
Hermansen said Glenayre plans to ship ReFLEX 50, and eventually ReFLEX 25, pagers to carriers, bundled with the InfoBeam and BeamLink solutions. He said enhanced versions of these solutions can be expected by the first quarter of next year.
Wirelessly enabling PDAs has been the inspiration behind other recent alliances. Several paging carriers this spring banded together in an effort to convince PDA manufacturers to embed ReFLEX paging technology in their devices. Tarzon said embedded wireless solutions-like the Palm VII, which transmits via an embedded Mobitex modem-are more expensive and not as flexible as a two-device solution such as InfoBeam.
Glenayre’s Hermansen said InfoBeam provides “Palm VII functionality at half the cost. It brings Palm VII solutions to Palm III users.”
JP Systems has several other computing solutions, such as a stock tracking system for Wall Street investors and its OneTouch Mail platform. Tarzon said the partnership with Glenayre will allow JP Systems to more easily develop means to wirelessly enable these other solutions, including eventually licensing InfoBeam to wireless portal providers.
Hermansen said the JP Systems agreement is the first of many agreements the company hopes to form with industry players.
“When you look at two-way messaging going forward, the need for partnerships like this is going to expand,” Hermansen said. “This is the first of several. Our relationship with JP is deeper than any we currently have.”
Glenayre also announced it formed a partnership with GTE Intelligent Network Services to jointly market a new service called Calling Name ID, which adds callers’ names to pager displays.
The service relies on an interface between Glenayre’s GL3000 wireless messaging switch and GTE’s network, which converts paging protocols to Signaling System 7 and provides access to SS7 networks and caller ID databases.
