After three years of providing mobile communications services to consumers, Visto Corp. is turning its focus toward the enterprise market with its mLynx Access Family of mobility access software and services. Gartner Group recently predicted more than one-third of employees worldwide will use some form of remote access technology by 2005.
Designed for large enterprises, Visto said the mLynx family provides businesses an immediate solution for providing secure mobile and wireless access to time-critical corporate information from any device. In addition, the software includes the Visto mLynx Enterprise Server Exchange Edition, which is designed to extend the power of Microsoft Exchange and Outlook to mobile or remote computers and Internet-enabled wireless devices.
“Our customers have been asking for a solution that easily enables secure, cost-effective and centralized access to critical business applications for their mobile employees who have a diverse set of needs,” said Renne Niemi, senior vice president of marketing for Visto. “The Visto mLynx Access Family is the answer to the enterprise organization’s mobile access management challenges by removing the expense and complexity of building and deploying remote and wireless access solutions.”
The software line includes Visto mLynx Access Platform and Enterprise Server Exchange Edition.
VMAP is a managed mobile access service built upon Visto’s legacy platform currently hosting more than 2.6 million business users. Visto said VMAP provides secure access through any browser-enabled computer or device, including support for WAP. In addition, the platform provides synching technology to extend e-mail and PIM capabilities of the leading messaging applications to wireline and wireless browser-based devices.
Enterprise Server Exchange Edition is an administration, access and synchronization server installed behind the corporate firewall to provision and manage corporate users on the VMAP. Enterprise Server Exchange Edition also is designed to integrate with Microsoft Exchange administration as well as centralized synchronization of e-mail, calendar and tasks between wireless devices and Exchange-based messaging and PIM applications.
“In the past, [information technology] managers have tried to restrict access to information behind firewalls,” explained Doug Brackbill, chairman of the board at Visto. “But, over the past year, after the Y2K thing, they have begun investigating how to integrate wireless devices into the enterprise.”
Brackbill noted the integration software could save companies hundreds of thousands of dollars compared to implementing similar solutions from Research in Motion for an entire workforce, with most of the savings coming from the use of existing devices.
Visto expects both platforms to be available by April, with pricing lower than comparable services offered by RIM.
