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All these applications won't do you any good without devices capable of supporting your needs. We suggest you identify and standardize on your hardware of choice now -- before each end user chooses his or her favorite. Think that won't happen to you? Gartner predicts that by 2004, IS organizations will have to support a minimum of 50 different device profiles. Ouch. Besides your basic PDA, cell phone and notebook, be on the lookout for:

>>  Tablet devices. A compromise between the traditional PDA and notebook, tablets couple portability and mobile network connectivity with a traditional desktop OS environment (see Dave Molta's column for more on tablets). This reduces the pain of specialized development for mobile devices but does not alleviate the issues surrounding asset and software management, data synchronization, and changes to the supporting infrastructure.

>>  Smart phones. The fruit of the marriage between PDAs and cell phones, the smart phone offers integration of media-rich content and a phone, all in a compact form.

Stuck in the Middleware with You

Try this: Go up to a fellow geek and say to him or her, "Let's talk middleware." Unless you approve this person's pay raises, in which case all bets are off, you'll likely get a look as though you just suggested sitting down and watching C-Span. But when it comes to enabling mobile-application access, middleware is not to be taken lightly. In "Break Free With Wireless LANs", we pointed out that you'll need wireless middleware or the services of a wireless ASP to deliver applications to mobile devices.

What is middleware's role in a mobile initiative? First, you need to determine what portion of your data to extend to mobile computing, then the data source must be integrated into the middleware platform. The platform will extract the data and transform it into a format designed for specific devices. The role of middleware is to extract and format data from back-office systems for transmission to mobile devices.

There are three ways to solve the middleware problem in-house: packaged applications, toolkits (APIs) and a hybrid approach. AvantGo packages an SFA suite designed to integrate with popular SFA applications while offering access to Lotus Notes, Microsoft Exchange and popular ERP systems. The company's mobile-delivery package provides integration with packaged SCM (supply-chain management) and TMS (team-management system) applications, as well as custom legacy systems. Air2Web takes a different approach, providing a hybrid between a packaged application and a set of APIs that utilize XML to provide transactional applications with any corporate data source, including CRM, EAI (enterprise-application integration), e-mail, ERP, SFA and SCM. Connectors are available for products from Aspect Communications Corp., J.D. Edwards, Lawson Software, PeopleSoft, Remedy Corp., SAP, Siebel and Vitria Technology.

And toolkits are available that let developers build custom middleware solutions. Sun Microsystems' J2ME (Java 2 Micro Edition) and Qualcomm's BREW (Binary Runtime Enviroment for Wireless) offer development environments, but you have to factor in the additional cost and time to design, develop and test such an application versus using a hybrid or packaged solution.

Bottom line, a successful middleware strategy is the key to supporting today's many mobile networks and devices. Regardless of whether you choose a packaged application, a custom solution via a toolkit or a hybrid solution, you'll need to determine which middleware platform is best for your initiative. The following features of a middleware solution should be examined carefully before you make a final decision:

>>  Session management. Wireless is not necessarily an "always-on" technology. Therefore, it is important that a middleware platform let users maintain sessions on their mobile devices even when a connection is lost. The middleware also should be able to automatically synchronize with the host using that session data when the connection again becomes available.

>>  Application extension. One of the differentiators in middleware products is the ability to extend data from the application layer -- meaning that transformation of the data should be able to occur directly from a back-end system and not necessarily by using existing Web-formatted data only.

>>  Integration capability. Integration of data sources with the middleware platform is extremely important to a successful mobile initiative. Many platforms cannot integrate with back-office applications, but the more advanced platforms have connectors, with development efforts to bring to market additional connectors as customers request them. Ensure that the middleware you've chosen will integrate relatively easily with your back-office systems, or you'll be back at square one, developing custom applications to tie your middleware back to your applications.

>>  Device heterogeneity. For work-force mobile initiatives, the decision on what types of devices are to be supported is under your control, and this issue becomes less problematic. But for mobile-commerce applications you'll have little control over the types of devices being used, and unless you're willing to sacrifice customers and revenue, you should ensure that your chosen middleware solution supports as large a number of devices as possible.