The TechMail

Bhavanashi Ramakrishna

TechMail Bureau, Bangalore

April 7, 2002 --

Emergence of mobile technologies may have provided enterprises the world over with new and efficient means of communication. However, a major concern in the use of these technologies has been their interoperability--an ability to facilitate co-ordination of activities among personnel spread over distant locations, often across the globe.

With this interoperability becoming the touchstone for mobile technologies, more and more enterprises are driven to this technology, which, in the changing economic milieu, is seen to be the one giving tangible cost savings as also enhancement in efficiency.

Riding on the potential of Short Messenger Service (SMS), city-based provider of wireless technology solutions, WDC Solutions, has come out with another SMS-powered wireless offering MobiPro Team that facilitates wireless interface between PC and mobile devices, irrespective of their location.

“MobiPro Team enables enterprises to send or receive information–messages and chat-- between mobile devices and PCs using SMS as mobile gateway,” says Company CEO Manju S Murthy.

According to him, the user, using the MobiPro Team solution, can chat with the other user(s) without having to know whether the person is available at the desk, or at any other place, even out of the locality. The dispatcher module of the MobiPro server keeps track of these details and ensures the message is delivered to the right device--whether it is PC or mobile handset.

“The accentuating feature that differentiates this product from other similar modules is the different medium of chat,” Murthy told The Tech Mail. “If the person is not logged onto his/her PC, the system will deliver the message onto his/her mobile device. If the user has logged onto the PC but is away from it, the system will send alert message that he/she has such a message from a particular person.”

The solution is also made fool-proof, he claimed, as its infrastructure is located within the corporate firewalls and therefore using any public access solutions is avoided totally.

In addition to one-to-one or one-to-many chat, MobiPro Team also supports broadcasts of messages. For instance, a message may be broadcast to a set of service personnel to attend to a customer problem at a particular spot. The personnel attending to the problem may then chat with, or broadcast queries to other service personnel to seek clarification or resolve issues arising at the customer site.

WDC is targeting segments like hospitality, FMCG, supply chain management and hardware and software vendors to push the product. It has recently entered into a ‘software management partner programme` with HP and finalized a deal with Biocon. It’s also about to sign another with a city-based five star hotel soon.

Though the HP deal was a small 10-user license, scalable up to 40, while that with Biocon was a ‘site license’ where large number of users can use the solution, the company is trying to bank on HP’s 800-strong vendor network in the country.

Apart from being compatible with current GSM technologies like SMS and WAP, MobiPro Team has also been made to support the emerging next generation technologies like CDMA, GPRS, and 3G, said Murthy. And, the company hopes that the opening up of `mobile wireless local loop (MWiLL) ‘ in the country will give a further boost to its SMS-led mobile technology.

“There’s still no clarity on the issue. However, once it is out of all hassles, and operators are permitted to conduct operations in MWiLL, we will be able to implement that feature as well,“ Murthy said. He hoped that the company will be able to roll out the MWiLL operable model by June this year.

For more information contact:

WDC Solutions Pvt Ltd
66, 2nd Main, Vyalikaval, Bangalore 560 003, India
Tel: +91 (80) 5113 7731
Fax: +91 (80) 5113 7731
E-mail: info@wdcsolutions.com