Mobility onslaught on IT explodes

Palm Desert, Calif.--A barrage of new mobility tools shown here at the DEMO '08 conference are being heaved from every direction at CIOs. Behind the attack are clever start-up companies and savvy end users because IT managers "have effectively handed over mobile choices to them," says Eric Strauss, CEO of LegiTime Technologies Inc. in Westport, Conn. He claims corporate IT lets employees choose their own handsets 65% of the time and pick their carrier nearly 85% of the time. "The ‘prosumer' is making the decision," he says. Yet, businesses mostly continue to support and pay for the devices and services without having any effective control. Worse still, among the favorite applications used in the field is short message service (SMS) communications, so that corporate data is sent to who knows whom in clear text. Strauss hopes CIOs will take a close look at his company's LegiText service that by next quarter will be able to encrypt SMS text, prioritize messages, cut out SMS spam and archive messages as well as integrate with Outlook and Notes. "Your message in-box on your smartphone will start looking like your e-mail in-box," he says, thus helping users manage their messages more effectively and improve their productivity. Currently, LegiText only works with Windows Mobile units with HTC touchscreens. Pricing will start around $30 per month per user.

Make mobile Web less like 1995

Nitin Bhandari, CEO of Skyfire Labs Inc., says that using mobile browsers on smartphones today is akin to using a browser in 1995. "It's mostly text and very slow," he quips. At DEMO today he demonstrated his company's eponymous browser that works with Web sites using streaming video, AJAX, JavaScript and even the latest release of Flash. Bhanu Sharma, director of product management for the Mountain View, Calif., says Skyfire compresses and transports the data in a proprietary format that jacks up the response time for page downloads. The beta of the Skyfire, due mid-February, targets the consumer "because they're easier to reach," Sharma says. Ultimately, he contends, corporate IT will need to get interested because eventually smartphones will become power users' laptops. Skyfire will work on Windows Mobile devices when it's released with Symbian units next on Skyfire's to-do list.

Jump between the Web and your phone

Ribbit Corp., also in Mountain View and mentioned here last month when it launched its telco-grade SmartSwitch software, showed a new service here called Amphibian that lets you hop between your mobile handset and Web pages to make and receive calls. According to Crick Waters, vice president of business development and strategy, Amphibian turns any Web page, such as a FaceBook or blog page, into a fully-functional telephone. It embeds a virtual mobile phone into a Web page, including your contact lists, calling history and any other capability of your handset. Amphibian also has text to speech capabilities, so you can hear your e-mail over your phone. You can also search voice messages with text strings. One neat feature lets you gather information available online about a caller in the Web page before you answer the phone. Waters calls it "CallerID 2.0," naturally. He says, because Ribbit makes its application programming interface (API) available, IT can integrate Web-based workflow processes with the activities of workers in the field. Available next quarter, basic Amphibian services will be available to consumers for free. That means lots of your employees will get to play with it, learn to depend on it and then toss it your way to help Amphibian jump into mainstream corporate IT.