IBM Corp. and American Mobile Satellite Corp. took their existing business relationship to another level last week, allowing AMSC to better target the potentially lucrative business-to-business market IBM commands.
The agreement calls for IBM to jointly market AMSC’s eLink wireless messaging and e-mail forwarding service to corporate information technology departments, using IBM’s extensive contacts in that space.
In particular, IBM’s Lotus Notes Group, Integrated Services Group, Tivoli and Advanced Computing divisions will actively sell the eLink solutions, according to the agreement. Between them, IBM has 5,000 salespeople with hundreds of distributors and partnerships focused in these areas, according to a report from SoundView Technology Group Inc.
“There are currently 26 million Lotus Notes users, predominantly in the Fortune 500, that IBM would like to target by writing applications specifically for this market segment that would allow them to utilize the synchronization characteristics of the eLink pager,” analyst Tim O’Neil wrote.
Also targeted are large e-mail hosting Internet service providers, mail service providers and application service providers.
IBM is a current eLink customer itself, using the solution to deliver messages to its field service personnel. Its decision to resell the service for AMSC is considered a significant boon for the wireless data firm, which has restated its desire to expand further into the business market.
“Our message to the business community is concise: The American Mobile goal is to be recognized as the pre-eminent two-way data network of choice for the high-growth business-to-business audience,” said Walt Purnell Jr., president and chief executive officer of AMSC. “Our outlook for 2000 is bullish, and we will continue to explore those opportunities that make strategic sense in the B2B space. In time, we expect to expand our inroads to the higher data usage consumer market through ISPs dedicated to enhancing wireless e-mail solutions to that market segment.”
Meanwhile, IBM has increasingly targeted the wireless space to expand its computing services. The company introduced a new software product it said translates Internet-based information to a format readable by various Internet appliances, including wireless handsets.
IBM WebSphere Transcoding Publisher customizes existing Internet content to match the reading capabilities of the receiving device so the applications do not have to be rewritten. It was built on an extensible, Java-based architecture, which IBM said allows it to convert data and applications written in Hypertext Markup Language or Extensible Markup Language to Wireless Markup Language for use on Wireless Application Protocol phones.
It also extends other IBM software offerings to wireless devices, such as the WebSphere Application Server, MQSeries Everywhere and Host Publisher.
It is available for AIX, Linux, Solaris, and Microsoft Windows NT and 2000 operating systems.
