Mission enterprise

Sprint PCS wants to ensure that business professionals can be productive when they leave the comforts of their offices. In less than six months, the wireless carrier has partnered with four companies to appeal to enterprises, as well as individual business professionals seeking to use the wireless Web to boost their work output (see box).

Most recently, Sprint PCS teamed with DataChannel, an enterprise information portal (EIP) provider, and Interact Commerce, an interactive selling solutions provider. The two companies represent the different ways Sprint PCS is approaching its business strategy and give the carrier's wireless Internet technology more presence in the business market.

"We are focused on small to large corporate customers, and having different partners helps us to address the different segments with different needs," said Jason Guesman, director of large business marketing for Sprint PCS.

The DataChannel partnership enables the delivery of corporate data through the EIP platform to Internet-enabled phones on Sprint PCS' wireless network, for instance. Corporate customers can access inventory programs, sales automation applications, customer databases and information behind the corporate firewall directly via the browser.

The emerging enterprise portal space is not expected to take off for another two years, Guesman said. However, it eventually will allow professionals to wirelessly access their customized intranet content.

While the Interact Commerce partnership is more of a content play, it still is considered part of Sprint PCS' overall business strategy by giving sales professionals access to business information and Interact.com Web services, including a calendar option and contact manager.

"Sprint PCS is willing to partner with anyone if it helps them get customers," said Adam Zawel, an analyst with The Yankee Group.

In July, Sprint PCS formed an alliance with Siebel Systems, allowing the enterprise application vendor to offer its customers wireless access to Siebel's e-business solutions.

As planned, Siebel's business customers - primarily large companies - will have instant remote wireless access to the company's business solutions, including its sales and field service applications. Business users also can respond to service requests, review and update sales opportunities and make real-time inquiries.

For Sprint PCS, allying with a large vendor such as Siebel gives it access to a huge installed base of enterprise customers. If those enterprise customers extend their current business applications wirelessly, then everyone wins.

"It is a win-win, and both parties understand the opportunity. We get to extend aggressively into the business market, and Siebel can extend wirelessly," Guesman said.

Sprint PCS expects to strike more content-oriented partnerships, as well as more specified application partnerships. The carrier is in trials with several corporate customers for each solution. Siebel is the exception; its Siebel Wireless business solution won't be released until later this year.

Like Siebel, Haht Software also saw the advantage of going wireless. The e-commerce solutions developer announced a deal with Sprint PCS in June to offer mobile access to critical information located on corporate servers via the wireless Web.

Reliance on the wireless Internet as a business resource has just begun. It might be beneficial to enterprises and wireless carriers to get on board sooner rather than later.

"One year ago, only some enterprises were focused on wireless," said Net Payne, senior manager of wireless data services with Sprint PCS. "Now we cannot go anywhere without seeing more focus on it."