InformationWeek

October 20, 1997

Service To Ease Access

Visto promises Web links to E-mail, files

isto Corp. is readying a service intended to make it easier for remote users to access E-mail, contact information, files on the corporate LAN, calendars, and other data via a Web browser.

Visto's initial rollout will include the Visto Briefcase, a user interface that displays the content users have identified. The interface is the front end to a database located at Visto headquarters that houses a secure subset of the user's desktop back at the corporate site.

The service also includes the Visto Assistant, synchronization software that keeps content up to date. It resides on the user's computers, such as the PC at the corporate office and the laptop used when traveling.

While on the road, the user logs into Briefcase.com, at which point a Java applet is down loaded to a laptop to set up a secure link back to the database at Visto. If a user makes changes to any files, they will be automatically updated on the user's desktop at the corporate site.

"What's been missing is universal access to content, such as E-mail, files, schedules, and Web site bookmarks," says Doug Brackbill, CEO of Visto, a startup in Mountain View, Calif. "Visto Briefcase provides secure access to your information from anywhere on the Internet."

For beta user Neal Chandra, an independent consultant in Sunnyvale, Calif., the service is a big time-saver: "If you are like me, moving around all the time, in different conference rooms or somewhere on the road, and you forget to bring a particular file, you can now get to it and everything is kept in one place, even if you're using different devices such as a notebook or desktop."

Pricing will be key, says Ross Rubin, an analyst at Jupiter Communications, a research firm in New York. "It is a premium service that most users will have to justi fy from a business perspective," he says. Visto executives haven't determined pricing for the service, due to be available by year's end.

Others say the service will be more attractive to corporate users when Visto rolls out the next generation in 1998. At that time, Visto will add features that will let companies house the Visto database at their site. The enhanced service will include links to various corporate applications so that mobile users can perform more complex tasks such as database queries.

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