Line of Business
10 mobility companies making business happen on smartphones
Apple's iPhone has had its hurdles in being integrated into the workplace. But that doesn't stop these companies from designing enterprise-class applications that any mobile worker would find useful. An A-list of companies to follow for mobile innovation.10/7/2009 6:04:00 AM By: John Cox
We took a look at wireless and mobile companies whose product innovation and ambition reflect the mobile industry ferment, which is being expressed in all kinds of products from IT management services to unique Apple iPhone applications.
These companies are trying to enable better mobile e-commerce and empower business class mobile users.
Slideshow: iPhone 3GS - nine nifty new features
Company name: Apperian
Founded: January 2009
Location: Boston
What it offers: Apperian offers the ability to make the Apple iPhone a true extension of the enterprise network and data. Apperian does consulting, application development and is creating a set of enterprise application frameworks for mobilizing secure enterprise data, e-commerce and intranets as iPhone applications.
Why it's worth watching: Created by Apple iPhone veterans, Apperian is entirely focused on enterprise-class mobile applications for the iPhone. Its application frameworks promise to provide much needed middleware to support mobile e-commerce and services for enterprise iPhones.
How the company got its start: A group of Apple employees had been involved in building applications for early enterprise customers, but it wasn't a business Apple would invest in. The group decided to split off and create their own company.
How the company got its name: "App" from, well, app. "Ian" means "belonging to, coming from, being involved in, or being like something" but it's also intended to echo "sapien" as in "homo sapien" (literally knowing man or wise man).
CEO and background: Chuck Goldman spent eight years at Apple as director of field engineering and professional services, helping enterprise customers integrate Macs and iPhones. Previously, he founded Interactive Media Solutions, which created online recruiting tools for colleges and universities.
Funding: Apperian received $200,000 in founder and angel funding, and in July closed a $1 million round of venture capital led by CommonAngels, a group of private investors and limited partners in two co-investment funds.
Who uses the product: Apperian has had several engagements, developing iPhone applications for American Greetings, DuPont and Timberland among others.
Company name: Glide Health
Founded: September 2009 launch
Location: New York City
What it offers: Mobile device access to electronic medical records, for both doctors and nurses and for patients. A subscription-based cloud service pulls data from third-party EMR systems, and reformats it on the fly for a plethora of mobile devices, operating systems, browser and displays.
Why it's worth watching: Glide Health offers healthcare practices of all sizes a cost-effective way to access existing medical data at patient bedsides or their homes. It leverages location data, auto-fill forms and other features to create a simplified workflow for highly mobile workers using a wide range of client devices.
How the company got its start: Glide Health is a spinoff from TransMedia, which had created Glide OS, a cloud-based software layer to interface back-end databases and applications with a multi-vendor swarm of handhelds. TransMedia identified healthcare as a hot market for this approach.
How the company got its name: The name, from the underlying software, is intended to suggest the "effortless data transfer between platforms."
Company name: Mavenir Systems
Founded: October 2005, but changed emphasis, and with venture capital funding in late 2008, introduced in February 2009 a mobile carrier platform for what it calls converged IP-based voice and messaging.
Location: Richardson, Texas
What it offers: Mavenir created a set of application servers for voice and messaging, which plug into the existing network cores of mobile operators. The servers let operators deploy enhanced versions of these cash-cow services to their subscribers, for both legacy 2G phones as well as new IP-based devices of all types, over a range of wireless access networks. These "Lego block" modules on Mavenir's mOne hardware/software platform work with existing mobile switches, control systems, third-party systems, subscriber billing servers and new IP-based cores.
Why it's worth watching: Regardless of their wireless access or the evolution of their core network, mobile operators can use Mavenir's application servers to quickly deploy new generation services -- Mobile VoIP and increased SMS capacity coupled with instant messaging, presence and even a "social network gateway" -- to a wider range of subscriber devices. And the entire infrastructure carries forward as operators shift to IP at the core. The company's unnamed Tier 1 operator in the United States plans to use the Mavenir platform to create a "connected home" service: as an add-on to their mobile plan, subscribers will be able to talk and message between any mobile phone and PC or a special home "hub."
How the company got its name: Originally, Mavenir formed in expectation of a fast industry migration to a new IP MultiMedia System (IMS) core networks. The company planned to create an "adapter" to let legacy devices work with the new infrastructure. When the IMS move stalled, Mavenir shifted focus to enable delivery of new services over existing networks.
How the company got its name: M for mobile, "avenir" in French means "future" -- the future of mobile.
CEO and background: Pardeep Kohli, formerly co-founder of Spatial Wireless, a software-based mobile switch vendor that was bought in 2004 by Alcatel, where he worked as senior vice president of the mobile next-generation network business. At the former PacBell, he was part of the network implementation team for the first big GSM network in the United States.
Funding: Someone likes this company -- in the depths of the financial crisis last December, Mavenir raised $17.5 million in a third round of financing. So far: $51 million raised since its October 2005 founding.
Who uses the product: Four operators, two of them announced: Wisconsin-based Cellcom and Viettel Telecom in Vietnam; the other two are "Tier 1 operators in the U.S. and Europe."
Company name: MeLLmo
Founded: 2008, decloaked and announced availability of it product May 2009.
Location: San Diego
What it offers: MeLLmo's Roambi server software will suck in an Excel spreadsheet, a Crystal Reports file or other data, and then format it to visualize the data according to four interactive, customizable, prefabricated views. It then generates this data as a native application that downloads and runs on your Apple iPhone. A special free version, with more limited features, is available at the company Web site.
Page Navigation 1) Electronic health records made mobile. - Page 12) Virtual smartphone software lets IT monitor devices as they would PCs. - Page 2
3) Company's algorithm allows tracking of consumer spending habits, behaviours. - Page 3
<< Back
