Refining pager-based communications

by Joanie Wexler

February 14, 2001 —

The more we get used to mobility, the pickier we get about the features and capabilities of our wireless devices and applications. One company that seems to understand this human trait is Wireless Knowledge, the company that makes the enterprise-based Workstyle Server for linking enterprise applications, such as e-mail, calendaring, customer relationship management and enterprise resource planning, to mobile devices.

Wireless Knowledge has created the Anystyle Server for linking enterprise apps to RIM 950 and 957 pagers. Anystyle server runs in an integrated fashion with Workstyle Server for an extra $2 per month per user (on top of the $10-per-month-per-user Workstyle charge), and the application supports client-side storage for offline work capabilities.

The interesting part is that you can sync up with your home e-mail or calendar over the air, rather than having to return to your desktop and stick your device in a cradle to do so. If a user on the road has an assistant managing their calendar, for example, and the user’s calendar continually is changing, each time the user syncs up over the air from the road, they’ll see a refreshed, updated version of the calendar. Road warriors can use their PCs (running Anystyle Desktop software) to configure how they want their messages filtered to them - name and subject line only, full text, messages from the boss only, and so on. If they decide they want more detail after the message arrives, they can use a fetch capability to get more.

If you’ve ever tried to coordinate responsibilities on the road with what’s going on at your physical office, you can see how this would fuel productivity.

One downside, for now, is that the application works only with Microsoft Exchange applications over the sub-10K bit/sec Mobitex network (the mobile data network for which the RIM pager was created). If you’re not already into paging, will you want to sign up for this service if your users are using other wireless networks that also give them access to Internet information? The good news is that the company says it plans to expand its device support soon for Palm, PocketPC and smartphone devices and plans to add Lotus Domino messaging and other applications later this year.

Network World