Monday, August 18, 2003
CeBIT America, Part 4: PalmSource Means Business
Posted by Janak Parekh in "EVENT" @ 08:30 AM
I thought this day would never come: I've finished my CeBIT article set, and I'm free! FREE! Well, until PC Expo rolls around. :lol: But before I gloat, we've got some business to talk about. PalmSource talking Business, that is.
David Nagel's PalmSource Keynote.
First Thoughts...
Davd's talk was on the first evening of CeBIT, and it was very tailored to the business audience. For the first time that I can remember, the PalmSource folks talked business, instead of extolling "zen", "simplicity", or any such feature. It's very clear that Palm is finally waking up to the fact that they've got to move beyond just the consumer market and snap up more of the enterprise market (although David did assert that Palm's in the lead anyway, according to market share statistics from IDC claiming that Palm had about 59% of the enterprise market, compared to 30% for Pocket PC).
(Also, apologies in advance for the blurry pictures; I couldn't use a flash and didn't have a tripod. I'll have to hire a professional photographer next time. :lol:)
Napoleonic Strategies
David started out by explaining that they are taking a "engage and see" approach, with technology delivering both strategic and tactical advantage. On this note, he specifically cited four major trends Palm wanted to address:
Palm OS 5 as the Solution, with "Sahara"
Not surprisingly, David proposed PalmOS 5 as a great base platform to build such business solutions on, to integrate middleware solutions. He pointed out that HotSync would, in the future, support server synchronization. Additionally, his assertion was that Palm OS 5 builds on top of Palm OS4's application popularity (with "many" of them being applicable for the enterprise), but now breaks hardware boundaries (such as supporting 128MB).
He then unveiled "Sahara" as the next major platform that Palm OS will use to support business. Interestingly, it was not clear from his talk if Sahara would be the next OS release or if it was a set of services that ran on top of PalmOS 5. From what he said, it seemed to be a little of both: Sahara is supposed to offer memory protection, trusted application models, and a comprehensive security framework.
Figure 1: The Sahara Platform - Overview.
David spent a lot of time stressing that Sahara was a pluggable, extensible framework. Examples he cited included MP3/4 codecs as options and built-in SSL3 (via PalmOS 5).
The talk then shifted to the individual device makers and enterprise solution providers -- and how they were contributing to building on top of PalmOS for the enterprise.
Sony - and How They Don't Get the Enterprise
The first individual vendor was Sony. It was a very short, boilerplate talk, and demonstrated how utterly clueless Sony was about the enterprise market. They spent all of their time stressing how multimedia was essential, and stuck to the case study of how realtors could use the integrated cameras in the NX/NZ series PDAs to take pictures of homes and upload it via WiFi or Bluetooth. They also pointed out how their PDAs can take voice memos, slide shows, and notes.
Visto and Exchange Connectivity
Fortunately, David came right back and put the subject back on track. He used the keynote to make a number of announcements -- the first being a partnership with Visto to provide Exchange connectivity via networking solutions like Bluetooth or WiFi. They are also working together to provide an end-to-end universal messaging client.
Handspring and their Treo 600
Of course, Handspring was invited onstage, as Palm was in the process of buying out the company; the idea was to leverage Handspring's focus on Smartphones. Handspring has been busy developing carrier relationships; they are aggressively working, in particular, with Sprint in the US and Orange in Europe. They acknowledged that they needed to more aggressively pursue relationships, and intend to release a GSM-enabled Treo in addition to the Sprint CDMA version, and sell it through AT&T, T-Mobile and Cingular.
Figure 2: Handspring showing off their Treo 600.
They attempted to demo some of the key features with their Treo 600 in an enterprise environment -- in particular, they had a PowerPoint solution on the unit -- but, being prerelease, it crashed. They are also looking at the device management problem, and Orange in particular is building an OTA (Over-The-Air) backup tool.
IBM and Web Services
Of all the parts of the talk, this was probably the best business-oriented segment. David announced at CeBIT that Palm was partnering with IBM to develop built-in support for Web Services, and his technical staff proceeded to give a "financial services" demo tying a Tungsten W and a Tungsten C together in a CRM scenario. WebSphere solutions will be supported. Interestingly, they claimed that these solutions could be deployed today.
Novell and ZENworks Device Management
Finally, David segued to Novell, who is integrating full Palm handheld device management policy support in ZENworks/Netware Directory Services. They gave a demo where they were able to push password policies down to a device via the ZENworks management tool, and they also demonstrated the use of their Groupwise email client on the Palm device. One neat feature was "self-destruct"; if a password was entered wrong for a predetermined number of times, the device would clear itself.
Figure 3: Novell's ZENworks management console.
Putting it All Together
Overall, I think this was one of Palm's most credible efforts towards recognizing enterprise needs. It's clear they have some ways to go -- for instance, a number of the talks were clearly consumer-oriented quickly refactored for enterprise environments -- but finally, they're starting to tackle the hard problems (deploying Web Services, Novell/Microsoft groupware integration, device management). I still strongly believe that Microsoft has a leg up here, due to the fact that they've been working on these problems quite a bit earlier; for example, server-based ActiveSync and email is available with Exchange 2000 today and will be enhanced with Exchange 2003. However, they must keep on moving and improving; Palm has woken up to the fact that they need to tackle the enterprise market, and is finally starting to land the deals to make this possible.
David Nagel's PalmSource Keynote.
First Thoughts...
Davd's talk was on the first evening of CeBIT, and it was very tailored to the business audience. For the first time that I can remember, the PalmSource folks talked business, instead of extolling "zen", "simplicity", or any such feature. It's very clear that Palm is finally waking up to the fact that they've got to move beyond just the consumer market and snap up more of the enterprise market (although David did assert that Palm's in the lead anyway, according to market share statistics from IDC claiming that Palm had about 59% of the enterprise market, compared to 30% for Pocket PC).
(Also, apologies in advance for the blurry pictures; I couldn't use a flash and didn't have a tripod. I'll have to hire a professional photographer next time. :lol:)
Napoleonic Strategies
David started out by explaining that they are taking a "engage and see" approach, with technology delivering both strategic and tactical advantage. On this note, he specifically cited four major trends Palm wanted to address:
- Web services;
- Decentralization of IT;
- Wireless (focusing specifically on WiFi and WAN, less of Bluetooth);
- Supporting mobile workers.
Palm OS 5 as the Solution, with "Sahara"
Not surprisingly, David proposed PalmOS 5 as a great base platform to build such business solutions on, to integrate middleware solutions. He pointed out that HotSync would, in the future, support server synchronization. Additionally, his assertion was that Palm OS 5 builds on top of Palm OS4's application popularity (with "many" of them being applicable for the enterprise), but now breaks hardware boundaries (such as supporting 128MB).
He then unveiled "Sahara" as the next major platform that Palm OS will use to support business. Interestingly, it was not clear from his talk if Sahara would be the next OS release or if it was a set of services that ran on top of PalmOS 5. From what he said, it seemed to be a little of both: Sahara is supposed to offer memory protection, trusted application models, and a comprehensive security framework.
Figure 1: The Sahara Platform - Overview.
David spent a lot of time stressing that Sahara was a pluggable, extensible framework. Examples he cited included MP3/4 codecs as options and built-in SSL3 (via PalmOS 5).
The talk then shifted to the individual device makers and enterprise solution providers -- and how they were contributing to building on top of PalmOS for the enterprise.
Sony - and How They Don't Get the Enterprise
The first individual vendor was Sony. It was a very short, boilerplate talk, and demonstrated how utterly clueless Sony was about the enterprise market. They spent all of their time stressing how multimedia was essential, and stuck to the case study of how realtors could use the integrated cameras in the NX/NZ series PDAs to take pictures of homes and upload it via WiFi or Bluetooth. They also pointed out how their PDAs can take voice memos, slide shows, and notes.
Visto and Exchange Connectivity
Fortunately, David came right back and put the subject back on track. He used the keynote to make a number of announcements -- the first being a partnership with Visto to provide Exchange connectivity via networking solutions like Bluetooth or WiFi. They are also working together to provide an end-to-end universal messaging client.
Handspring and their Treo 600
Of course, Handspring was invited onstage, as Palm was in the process of buying out the company; the idea was to leverage Handspring's focus on Smartphones. Handspring has been busy developing carrier relationships; they are aggressively working, in particular, with Sprint in the US and Orange in Europe. They acknowledged that they needed to more aggressively pursue relationships, and intend to release a GSM-enabled Treo in addition to the Sprint CDMA version, and sell it through AT&T, T-Mobile and Cingular.
Figure 2: Handspring showing off their Treo 600.
They attempted to demo some of the key features with their Treo 600 in an enterprise environment -- in particular, they had a PowerPoint solution on the unit -- but, being prerelease, it crashed. They are also looking at the device management problem, and Orange in particular is building an OTA (Over-The-Air) backup tool.
IBM and Web Services
Of all the parts of the talk, this was probably the best business-oriented segment. David announced at CeBIT that Palm was partnering with IBM to develop built-in support for Web Services, and his technical staff proceeded to give a "financial services" demo tying a Tungsten W and a Tungsten C together in a CRM scenario. WebSphere solutions will be supported. Interestingly, they claimed that these solutions could be deployed today.
Novell and ZENworks Device Management
Finally, David segued to Novell, who is integrating full Palm handheld device management policy support in ZENworks/Netware Directory Services. They gave a demo where they were able to push password policies down to a device via the ZENworks management tool, and they also demonstrated the use of their Groupwise email client on the Palm device. One neat feature was "self-destruct"; if a password was entered wrong for a predetermined number of times, the device would clear itself.
Figure 3: Novell's ZENworks management console.
Putting it All Together
Overall, I think this was one of Palm's most credible efforts towards recognizing enterprise needs. It's clear they have some ways to go -- for instance, a number of the talks were clearly consumer-oriented quickly refactored for enterprise environments -- but finally, they're starting to tackle the hard problems (deploying Web Services, Novell/Microsoft groupware integration, device management). I still strongly believe that Microsoft has a leg up here, due to the fact that they've been working on these problems quite a bit earlier; for example, server-based ActiveSync and email is available with Exchange 2000 today and will be enhanced with Exchange 2003. However, they must keep on moving and improving; Palm has woken up to the fact that they need to tackle the enterprise market, and is finally starting to land the deals to make this possible.
