Technology from one Vancouver-based company has turned the director of product development at another company from a cynic into an optimist.
Clearigo Solutions Inc., developers of plug-and-play mobile server technology, and Ucora Corp., provider of knowledge management software systems, have announced a strategic relationship that was born out of a product pitch to Ucora.
Paul Toth, director of product development at Ucora, said he gets pitched quite a few ideas, but when he realized how easy to use Clearigo Mobile Server was with the Ucora IntelaDex Knowledge Management System, he was sold.
“Their server technology permits the dynamic conversion of your Web application to WAP so you can offer it on Web-enabled technologies,” Toth said. “We didn’t have to do any real new programming, we just had to remove stuff and format it just a bit. Within one day we had someone from Clearigo install the software on our server and that evening we converted the application and the next day we were on a BlackBerry device. I am a bit of a cynic, but honestly, it only took us that long to do it. It was easy to do, very, very easy to do.”
This extends IntelaDex onto any mobile handheld device including Research in Motion’s BlackBerry, and Palm OS-based and Pocket PC platforms.
“Time is of the essence in the technology industry and what we felt was that many of our prospects are interested in the ability to have wireless in the near future, but not immediately,” he said. ” We started researching the various companies and resources out there and many companies were heavy on the development side, which made it costly.”
Toth said police enforcement agencies and government agencies have been especially interested in the product combination.
IntelaDex software provides personal control and team collaboration of business knowledge and, unlike traditional enterprise systems, it does it without need for IT support. Clearigo develops server-side software solutions that extend any existing Web-based application onto wireless devices for mobile commerce. Under the terms of the partnership, Clearigo and Ucora will work together in enabling IntelaDex for the wireless Internet and mobile commerce, a market projected by IDC to reach $20.8 billion worldwide by 2004.
“Ucora’s IntelaDex application provides a perfect example demonstrating the capabilities of the Clearigo Mobile Server,” said Kevin Chan, president and CEO of Clearigo from Vancouver. “The benefit we get from this partnership is validation as well as reaching to some of Ucora’s customer base.”
Since this extends all of Clearigo’s applications onto PDAs and wireless devices, Chan said it illustrates the actual need for a “simple, easy-to-use solution for existing applications.”
Alister Sutherland, director of software research for IDC Canada, said that both these companies will likely benefit from this partnership.
“It seems to me that they have carved out some expertise,” Sutherland said from his Toronto office. “It does sound like there is some synergy between the two and they are going to leverage each other.”
He continued that Clearigo and Ucora are on the right track by talking about project management, incident tracking and inventory control systems.
“That is where this kind of technology is really going to be deployed first and where it is going to gain traction,” he said. “The whole idea of using it as a sales force automation tool, well, everyone is trying to do that and I think it has a ways to go.”
