Antenna Software, a mobile software vendor that specializes in distributing back-end applications, has arrived in Europe.
Antenna already has a number users at European branches of U.S. customers, many of which use Research In Motion (RIM) Blackberrys, according to the company’s European vice president Bob Apollo.
“RIM is acknowledged in the world of e-mail,” said Apollo. “For other applications, we put intelligent software behind the firewall to extract the relevant data and package it up for delivery.”
While BlackBerry has been improving its support for enterprise applications besides e-mail, and other mobile e-mail vendors have been doing likewise, individual companies have heavily customized applications.
Mobilizing back-end applications will always involve custom work, says Apollo, even though Antenna has ready-made building blocks to mobilize around 40 modules from enterprise applications including Oracle, Siebel, SAP and PeopleSoft. “We can create a relatively repeatable solution,” said Apollo, “so we’re not building from scratch.” The company is a partner of RIM.
Antenna’s existing customers tend to be those with mobile staff whose time is critical, such as field service forces for expensive medical or airport security scanners, or sales forces for fast moving consumer goods.
Customers include Pitney Bowes, Siemens Medical, Heineken Ireland, Fujitsu and L-3, the makers of airport security systems.
Antenna will charge from