HP and Nokia partner to develop and promote business-critical Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) solutions

Companies to deliver integrated WAP solutions that enable enterprises to access E-services over the Internet from anywhere with mobile devices

(September 20, 1999) - In a move that changes the landscape in the mobile Internet market, Hewlett-Packard Company and Nokia Corporation today announced a global agreement to jointly develop and promote business-critical mobile Internet solutions for enterprises. This alliance will enable customers to access e-services over the Internet with mobile handheld devices, such as Nokia media phones.

Nokia announced that the Nokia WAP Server software will be available on both HP-UX(1) and the Windows NT operating system. Under the terms of the agreement, HP will resell the Nokia WAP Server software for both operating systems worldwide through its direct and indirect channels.

The first HP 9000 Enterprise Server to support the Nokia WAP Server software will be the L-Class entry-level server, introduced today (see today's announcement titled "New HP Entry-level UNIX System Solutions Drive E-services"). The L-Class is ideal for the emerging WAP market because it brings high-end business-critical capabilities to the entry-level market. This business-critical support enables companies to offer reliable Internet and intranet access to their customers and employees. WAP-based solutions enable customers to access valuable data and e-services from wherever they are.

"What is revolutionary here is that now we can get access to business-critical data wherever we go," said Pekka Ala-Pietilä, president of Nokia Corporation. "We can use that in various forms building the freedom, creating the capabilities and access to services that people never dreamed of having in a mobile environment. By combining the Internet and mobility, we can truly start building a mobile information society that will change the way we work and communicate today. As we see this to be an industry effort, we are glad to announce collaboration with HP, a global leader in business-critical computing, and we look forward to successfully collaborating in the mobile e-services arena."

"This move into the wireless Internet market is a critical building block in the construction of an open-services market," said Ann Livermore, president and chief executive officer of HP Enterprise Computing. "With a mobile giant such as Nokia, who shares our e-services vision, we can help people and businesses develop and deploy business-critical WAP services and solutions and derive new value from the Internet."

In addition, HP and Nokia will work together to optimize the Nokia WAP Server on all HP 9000 and HP NetServer platforms, allowing easier deployment of WAP-based e-service solutions in business-critical environments. Not only will corporations be able to deploy and administer WAP solutions much more easily, but HP will provide one-stop shopping for both hardware and software as well as an expert understanding of the security, reliability and scalability concerns that customers have in deploying e-service solutions.

The first available e-service solution will be a WAP-enabled mail access solution based on HP's OpenMail business messaging product. OpenMail users can also have the added security enabled by the HP Praesidium VirtualVault trusted Web-server platform, which provides U.S. Department of Defense-grade, "B-level" security mechanisms, to thwart even the most sophisticated attacks. The Nokia WAP Server is the first in the world to implement Wireless Transport Layer of Security (WTLS) service in its first software release, allowing end-to-end secure access over the cellular network from mobile devices to this environment.


[ Home | Contact | MobiChat | Experts database | Let's do it ]

Comments to the content of this page can be posted on the MobiChat discussion group

logo.gif (1569 bytes)