A Good Wireless Deal

At a press conference this week, Good Technology announced a strategic partnership with Dell in an effort to bring more affordable wireless messaging products and services to the enterprise.

I believe this alliance will spark lucrative opportunities for both companies, but more so for Good, because Dells backing is just what the company needs to increase market adoption of its GoodLink platform. The Good/Dell joint venture will also create interesting competition in the wireless messaging space thats currently dominated by RIM.

Goods partnership with Dell means corporate customers will be able to buy a comprehensive wireless messaging system that offers GoodLink software packaged with the PowerEdge servers and low-cost handhelds made by Dell. Companies can also leverage their existing investments in RIM since GoodLink also runs in BlackBerry devices.

As I said in my review of the GoodLink 1.5, this wireless messaging platform offers simplified management and ease of use by providing continuous two-way wireless synchronization between the handhelds and Outlook applications—without the need for desktop cradles, as RIM devices require.

GoodLink currently runs on the Good G100 and several older BlackBerry handhelds, such as the 957. It runs with no desktop software, so companies save on deployment costs as well.

RIM, however, has the advantage of supporting more devices including Palm and PocketPC PDAs, and it runs on more data networks, including CDMA2000 1x and GSM/GPRS. Good currently runs only on Cingulars Mobitex Network, but is planning to support GPRS and CDMA2000 1x networks as well.

Good Technology is beta testing GoodLink in PDAs running the Palm and PocketPC mobile OSes, and plans to announce products supporting Palm and PocketPC later this year.

Dell made an entree into the handheld market last year with its $249 Axim PDA. The low price point of the Axim created quite a stir in the PDA space, but Dell enjoyed only limited sales success.

Dells PDA profits are minute compare to its revenue for servers and desktops, yet it will be interesting to see what products its union with Good will spawn later this year. Stay tuned.

Is it all Good? Write to me at francis_chu@ziffdavis.com.