Forging ahead with its wireless Internet initiatives, IBM (NYSE:IBM) today announced alliances with eight of the industry's top Internet Professional Services firms to build mobile e-commerce solutions.
AGENCY.COM, answerthink, Luminant Worldwide Corporation, Organic, R/GA, Rare Medium, Razorfish and US Interactive will work with IBM and use its technology to help businesses worldwide create compelling content and services for wireless devices, such as mobile phones, PDAs, and other Internet-enabled appliances.
As part of the alliance, IBM will invest in special support programs tailored to meet the needs of these firms, which last year generated more than $1 billion in revenue for consulting, web design and integration services. In return, these companies will build a percentage of their wireless web solutions on IBM middleware, the critical software layer that provides the linkages between different operating systems and the applications businesses use to run their companies.
"In a few years more than 60 percent of all Web transactions will be triggered by wireless devices, making mobile e-commerce a tremendous opportunity for businesses to provide new personalized, location-based services over the Internet," said Mark Hanny, vice president of IBM's Web Integrator Initiative. "These companies will have tremendous influence over which platforms businesses use to create content and services for these devices, and we're committed to provide them with the support they need to develop and deploy wireless solutions using IBM hardware and software."
Today's announcement builds on IBM's strategy to work with leading companies, helping them use IBM technology to capture new business in specific market segments, such as wireless. For example, these Web agencies will participate in a variety of wireless training sessions and joint marketing and business development programs. They will also be able to leverage IBM Research and have access to IBM's customer relationships.
Initially, the companies will use IBM's WebSphere Everyplace Suite as a foundation for the mobile solutions they develop for clients. WebSphere Everyplace Suite is the industry's most complete server software for delivering mobile Internet solutions to non-traditional computing devices, including wireless handsets. It features a variety of functions for delivering content and services to pervasive devices, including IBM's WebSphere Transcoding Publisher, which automatically "translates" Web data into an appropriate format that can be read from handheld devices. Other features include robust data synchronization software to keep data current across multiple devices, Tivoli Subscription Manager that lets businesses easily track and manage them and support for multiple wireless protocols, including Wireless Application Protocol (WAP).
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