IM Impressed

With Sprint PCS's Enterprise Application Messaging, mobile applications become your "buddies." You instant message them in a format modeled after IM "buddy" lists. They IM you back.

In addition to messaging other people, this allows you to interact with, say, phone directories in more familial terms: As Bruce Friedman, Sprint PCS's managing director of mobile computing services, put it, "If I want to say, 'Find John Smith,' I could just say, 'f john smith.'" Now that doesn't sound like something a "buddy" would say.

Analysts say Sprint PCS has surpassed its peers with such an offering, even if it comes at a time when corporate IT budgets may not have immediate room for it.

"It's hard to make an argument for [return on investment] when you're having people look up telephone numbers," Friedman conceded. "But if it allows [salespeople] to take one more order per week, [the system] pays for itself in a very short period of time."

And because applications are notified of workers' presence, the system can be used for a lot more than phone directories. For example, in a technical emergency, the system could see which technicians are online and alert them. If they don't respond despite being online, the system could escalate the case to their manager.

Sound like one more reason to keep your cell phone turned off? Don't try it, warned Friedman. "[Your boss] can pull reporting and say, 'You worked 8:00 to 5:00 the last five days, but [the system] only showed you present on the network for 10 hours. What were you doing, eating doughnuts?'"

Thanks a lot, "buddy."

For a related story, read our February 2002 feature, How a Little Software Company in Seattle is Mobilizing E-mail for Everybody (One Person at a Time).