Enterprises Hoping to Sail Away With Handheld Computers

New York --- IT managers are looking into deploying handheld computers as an alternative IT infrastructure that won't break the backs of their budgets or end-users.

The Sea Education Association is shopping for handheld computers to use as a platform for salesmen making presentations to customers. The company is in an unusual business: They provide college students with a semester at sea, doing oceanographic research and living on and crewing a tall sailing ship--kind of an Outward Bound program or adventure vacation at sea, with college credit and oceanographic research thrown in. Salespeople drum up business by giving PowerPoint presentations to groups of college students. Both Pocket PC devices such as the Compaq iPaq, which uses the Microsoft operating system, and Palm devices allow users to attach a SVGA monitor or projector and use the devices to give presentations.

The Sea Education Association is also considering using handheld computers on the ships to allow the crew to record experimental results. SEA is looking at handheld computers as more lightweight and less expensive alternatives to notebook computers.

"If I did it for everybody, it might be too expensive," said Edward Dennen, network administrator for SEA, in an interview on the floor of PC Expo here. "But the Palm and Pocket PC are becoming feature rich enough that they might be useful."

Likewise, Insurance company Risk Enterprise Management is shopping for handheld computers as an alternative to notebooks for about 100 traveling employees.

"I'd like to make life easier for people like myself who travel a lot and wouldn't have to carry a laptop around," said John Ferro, assistant vice president of PC/Network Technology for the company.

The economic downturn will make it more difficult to justify investing in new technology such as mobile computing. On the other hand, handhelds are significantly less costly to buy than PCs. And because handheld computers are simpler than PCs, the total cost of ownership is less, Ferro said.

The IT managers' shopping expedition comes at an opportune time as vendors are turning up the effort to win enterprise customers.

Palm this week said it signed a deal with PricewaterhouseCoopers to provide mobile enterprise applications to Global 2000 companies. PwC helped design an internal application Palm employees run on wireless Palm VIIx handhelds. The software allows Palm employees to track inventory, use e-mail, check on the status of purchase orders, and approve expense reports, said Douglas Solomon, senior vice president and chief strategy officer for Palm. Palm and PwC will look to turn the service into a product they can sell.

In a keynote at PC Expo here, Palm CEO Carl Yankowski said the company plans to resell middleware from Extended Systems that connects handheld devices to existing enterprise software; the Extended XTNDConnect Server Software will be sold as a Palm-branded product beginning in the fourth quarter. That's noteworthy because Palm had a deal to acquire Extended earlier this year, but abandoned the plan when Palm's mounting inventory excesses and other financial issues caused Palm to run short on cash.

Handspring is arguably making the most dramatic enterprise push. The company's Visor, Edge and Prism handheld computers, which run the Palm operating system, are among the fastest-selling handhelds. But until recently, they've been sold almost exclusively through consumer channels.

However, for the past two months, Handspring has been working to change that. Recognizing that enterprises often buy through integrators and resellers, Handspring has lined up partnerships with 600 resellers, including CompuCom and Dell, as well as boutique integrators like Synchrologic. That's up from a standing start of no reseller relationships two months ago, said Darren Thierry, director of enterprise sales for Handspring.