InformationWeek

June 23, 1999

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Mobile Synchronization

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In general, documents on mobile devices will necessarily lose some formatting, and WYSIWYG is out of the question, unless you normally print your documents on 3-inch-by-5-inch index cards.

Travelers and mobile workers should be especially aware of this restriction--if they have to read through a 300-page doc-ument using their Palm device, it may take them much longer than usual to scan the file to locate the appropriate information.

Databases And ERP
A number of vendors, including Sybase, SAP, and others such as Puma, are providing portals into server-based databases from various handheld devices, primarily Palm and CE handheld devices. These are custom-written for each database application, as the PC-oriented screens that would normally be displayed in the office can't be displayed on the small screens.

Vendors are racing to provide development tools to allow administrators to easily develop handheld versions of their applications.

For example, Synchrologic is shipping a tool called SyncKit for Palm that allows administrators to provide users with data from multiple company databases on Palm devices.

Puma has previewed software that gives handheld devices the ability to access and view company data. It supports back-end interfaces such as Open Database Connectivity, HTML, and Lotus Notes, and also includes a MobileXtension Wizard that lets developers quickly create custom views of back-end applications in conjunction with Satellite Forms. Satellite Forms, a rapid application development tool for devices based on the Palm Computing platform, integrates with enterprise data from Oracle, DB2, Lotus Notes, Microsoft Access, and other databases.

The Enterprise
The strategic issue for many IT managers is whether to attempt to standardize on a single handheld platform--in the process, irritating users who have already bought other devices of their own and made an investment getting them to work--or to attempt to support many different devices, accepting that each may require a custom solution.

Given that many early adopters of handhelds are relatively influential, it is perhaps fortunate that there are tools to support the second option.

At a relatively basic level, the latest versions of Intellisync and Harmony support many different software PIMs, contact managers, and mobile devices. Buying a large number of licenses and issuing them to all mobile users should reduce help-desk calls substantially.

Beyond that, the next step is to provide synchronization with a network server, rather than setting up synchronization among many different PCs and mobile devices.

This is possible through the use of tools such as Intellisync Anywhere, which currently supports the Palm device and Microsoft Exchange and will soon support CE devices as well, and other groupware, including Notes.