NEW YORK—Hoping to keep a foothold in the corporate market, Palm Inc. software subsidiary PalmSource Inc. is planning software that focuses specifically on the needs of the enterprise.
“Wireless is here, creating new opportunities—and new problems,” said David Nagel, president and CEO of PalmSource, in a keynote at the here.
Chief among these concerns are security, messaging and management, Nagel said.
To that end PalmSource announced a development partnership with wireless messaging application manufacturer Visto Corp. to create a messaging client designed specifically for enterprise users.
PalmSource also announced a partnership with IBM to create a Web services toolkit for mobile devices, which will allow for online access to corporate applications from Palm OS-based devices, via the Internet.
PalmSource is focusing strongly on security, according to Nagel.
“The devices are portable, and theyre easily left behind in cabs and airports,” Nagel said. “You have a $250 device, but it has $250 million of corporate data on it.”
To that end, security will be a big part of PalmSources Mobile Business Architecture (MBA), code-named Sahara.
The Sahara framework, currently in beta, will support AES and RC4 on the encryption side and signed code and passwords on the authentication side, Nagel said. It will also include better device management and messaging tools than are currently found in the Palm OS, he said.
