Designed for both business users and consumers, the new offerings can help individuals make better business decisions faster, while connecting friends, work colleagues and teams beyond what has been available in the PC era.
According to a recent report from IBM's Institute for Business Value, the number of mobile Internet users worldwide is projected to approach one billion, a 191% increase from 2006 and a compound annual growth rate of 24%. Also, 67% of all workers today use mobile and wireless computing.
To capture this market demand, IBM is combining its software, services and research expertise to develop new mobile products and services. The new software includes products with business intelligence, collaboration, social networking and business performance capabilities.
In addition, IBM is providing developers with new tools to make existing software applications run on mobile devices. IBM's software is built on open standards so it can be used with most mobile platforms including BlackBerry, iPhone, Windows Mobile, and Symbian.
IBM is announcing new business consulting services to help companies manage a mobile work environment. Called Mobility@Work, the consulting and implementation services can help employers increase productivity by as much as 30% and cut real estate costs, the second largest corporate expense after salaries and benefits.
IBM Rational Business Developer is software that helps developers create Web 2.0-style applications in IBM's newest business language, Enterprise Generation Language (EGL), to run on a mainframe or mobile devices. EGL makes it easy for developers to build new applications, like mobile web applications, or extend existing applications without having to be familiar with the underlying middleware or platform technologies.
IBM Rational Host Access Transformation Services (HATS) is software that helps developers transform green screen applications into a mobile user interface and web services allowing end users to access mainframe applications from a mobile phone, PDA or other remote mobile device in a highly secure manner.
WebSphere Business Monitor is business activity monitoring software that allows users to measure business process performance, monitor ongoing and completed processes, and report on business operations. WebSphere Business Monitor is now available on BlackBerry devices and will be available on iPhone in the fourth quarter of 2008.