IBM, Sprint to Extend Sprint PCS Wireless Web to Enterprise

With plans to develop a variety of wireless business applications and services for the mobile workforce, computer giant IBM Corp. (Armonk, NY) will join forces with long-distance carrier Sprint PCS (Kansas City, MO). Planned for early next year, the companies jointly will develop and test new services that allow business people to send and receive corporate email and personalized corporate business applications in "real time" directly on Sprint PCS Internet-ready phones.

In September, Sprint PCS launched the Wireless Web Connection. With this service, business customers connect to a corporate Intranet or the Internet by connecting a cable to a laptop, personal digital assistant, or other handheld computing device while using a Sprint PCS Phone in place of a modem. By combining the wireless network from Sprint PCS with enterprise software and new hosting services from IBM, business customers will be able to use wireless phones to directly access much of the same corporate information they can today with a PC.

To complement this service, Sprint PCS and IBM have teamed to offer real time access to this same corporate Intranet information directly on the display of a Sprint PCS Internet-ready Phone, without a cable or computing device connection. IBM plans to provide extensions to its existing enterprise software products—such as database, messaging and device management—that will allow wireless data networks to accommodate the delivery of data and transactions to and from a variety of devices.