Competitors such as Sybase company iAnywhere Solutions, and Extended Systems have supported the BlackBerry for some time (iAnywhere added management support for the BlackBerry in April 2002). In an interview with ComputerWire, Intellisync’s chief marketing officer Rip Gerber said that the company expects to add support for the BlackBerry to its Mobile Suite in June.
But while Gerber conceded that it has been slower than some of its competitors to support the BlackBerry, he said the overall functionality of its Mobile Suite is ahead of the competition even today. In terms of multi-device support, in terms of security and scalability, we’re already superior, he said. While the competition has to do multiple replicating databases to get data from back-end databases down to mobile devices, our recently announced advances in our synch technology means we can now slash the cost and time required for mobile deployments by directly connecting to enterprise applications. It’s like a freeway instead of lots of parking lots.
Intellisync said it already offers compatibility with the palmOne Treo, PocketPC, laptops, tablets, and more. It said that instead of enterprises having to purchase a proprietary server and service to support BlackBerry and other devices individually, from June they will be able to use its Mobile Suite to manage nearly every mobile device, including BlackBerry, in the enterprise for email, security, enterprise application and data push, and more.
Asked whether it has RIM’s blessing for the BlackBerry support, since its Mobile Suite can now act as a direct competitor to RIM’s BlackBerry Enterprise Server, Gerber said: There is an interesting dynamic going on here, because we are both facing the NTP challenge. A US court found in December last year that RIM infringes patents owned by NTP Inc in its wireless email system, but it remains free to sell the BlackBerry while a technicality is pondered. The NTP challenge has enhanced our relationship with RIM because we are united against a common enemy, said Gerber. Besides, it knows it needs to open up its platform if it is going to survive.
Intellisync said its Mobile Suite supports all of BlackBerry’s built-in applications so there is no need for users to adapt to a new solution for email, calendar, contacts, and so on. Applications such as CRM and salesforce automation will be able to work in push fashion. Data and processes can be proactively pushed down to the device rather than the user having to request them, and this applies not only to Blackberry devices but also to laptops and Tablet PCs, Windows Mobile-based Smartphones, and handhelds based on the Palm, Pocket PC, and Symbian operating systems. The company said any enterprise application can be pushed down to the supported mobile devices.
For its most recent quarter ended January 31, Intellisync posted sales of $16.3m, up 63% from $10m in the same period a year earlier. It reported a net loss of $973,000, compared to a net loss of $3.2m in the year-ago period. As a Sybase company, meanwhile, iAnywhere does not break out figures, but does point out that IDC has named it the leader in the mobile middleware market three years in a row now. IDC named iAnywhere, RIM, and Intellisync numbers one, two, and three respectively in the mobile middleware market in a recent report.
IDC said the mobile middleware market grew 27.4% to $424.4m in 2003, up from $333m in 2002. It forecasts the market will increase to $1.3bn by 2008, marking a compound annual growth rate of 24.2%.
