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April 9, 2001

Editor: Karyl Scott (kscott@cmp.com)

handheld phone Whole World In Their Hands
When Sun Microsystems dispatches field engineers to customer sites, it wants to outfit them with the collective knowledge of the entire company--all in the palm of their hands.

Sun began working on the problem of how to provide field engineers with up-to-the-minute access to information seven months ago. "We were overwhelmed by the amount of information that had to be communicated to the field support team," says Greg Richards, senior manager for global support operations.

Fifty Sun field engineers in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Singapore are testing the field information appliance--a handheld computer with a built-in cellular modem and a bar-code scanner. The device will be deployed worldwide to 3,500 support engineers this summer.

The hardware is a modified handheld that's about half the size of a Palm PC and manufactured by Symbol Technologies Inc. The device lets engineers scan bar codes on the components in a server, look up information on those devices, order parts, or enter advisories in the support database.

Sun contracted with Red Hat Inc. to build an implementation of the Linux operating system for this small platform. Red Hat developed the system in 90 days. Sun also outsourced the development of its field-support application. FETools is a Java-and XML-based app that interfaces to Sun's case management, logistics, and quality-assurance databases. It supports data collection, inventory tracking, and case management. The appliance also includes a browser and an E-mail client.

Security was especially important, since field engineers are accessing strategic information such as sales and customer data.The device provides both encryption and authentication.

While the handheld appliance isn't likely to be a commercial product from Sun, Richards says the knowledge gleaned from this project will probably be shared with Sun's customers.

A Better Way To Search
When consumers don't find what they're looking for on a retailer's Web site, they often leave, perhaps never to return. According to the Boston Consulting Group, half of all online purchase attempts are lost because of the inability to find products.

Lost Opportunity EasyAsk Inc. thinks it has a better way of fulfilling shoppers' requests. The software maker has built a search engine that queries the databases in which product catalogs reside. Most Internet search engines perform only simple text searches. "Our search engine takes advantage of the structure that already exists in companies rather than creating a separate overlay system to get at that data," founder Larry Harris says.

The results from an EasyAsk search are a lot more precise than those from text searches--by some estimates achieving 90% accuracy. In addition, the EasyAsk software can perform linguistic analysis and spell checks. It can also search for synonyms based on single words and phrases, so if you're looking for a woman's red sweater, the software will also find related items such as a woman's maroon pullover.

Version 6.0, which supports Windows NT, Unix, and Java, is scheduled to be available this month.