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To: A.J. Mullen who wrote (33961)	7/2/1999 9:15:00 PM
From: Ruffian	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 152472

Good Article On Wireless Knowledge> From the July 5, 1999, issue of Wireless Week How To Jump-start An Industry By Brad Smith Dave Whalen knew the potential customers he wanted to reach for WirelessKnowledge LLC's wireless data product, but he needed an effective way to deliver his message. Then the idea came to him: Why not go through the people who already work with those customers and know their needs? Vice president of sales and marketing for the joint venture of Microsoft Corp. and Qualcomm Inc., Whalen decided to put together an alliance of leading computing systems integrators and his value-added resellers, the wireless carriers. His thinking went like this: These companies already have business relationships with key information technology managers at major national and regional corporations. The systems integrators would work with WirelessKnowledge's wireless carrier customers to sell and integrate its Revolv service, which gives mobile professionals access to their corporate intranets for e-mail and other information. WirelessKnowledge has alliances with nine wireless carriers to provide Revolv, a service bureau-based offering, to corporations. It's involved with several carriers but is waiting for devices and network upgrades before launching commercially this fall. Revolv exists to cope with the explosion of mobile devices such as personal digital assistants, two-way pagers and, soon, handsets with microbrowsers. Employees are using these devices more often and are asking their IT departments for remote access. IT managers know they must learn to integrate these devices or employees will find a way of doing it themselves, much in the same fashion that individuals set up their own Internet access before it was possible through corporate intranets. Last week Whalen announced the first alliance program member, the $6.9 billion Fortune 500 technology services company Inacom Corp. Inacom has more than 1 million Microsoft Exchange seats deployed worldwide and serves 35 percent of the Fortune 500 companies. The Omaha, Neb., company will add Revolv to its portfolio of services to all those customers. How did Whalen sell Inacom on the idea? With the wireless carriers acting as VARs, Whalen knew they could sell their network capabilities to enterprise customers, but the computing side of the equation was something they weren't that conversant with. "We decided to call on the experts who know how to talk with IT managers and have a long-term relationship with them already. Marry the two together and find out who the enterprise customers are who are using Exchange and we can move the whole wireless data industry forward." Whalen also put together a compensation plan to entice the systems integrators to use their personnel and resources without any upfront payment. Instead, the integrators will receive a recurring revenue stream from the new business that is generated. "It won't happen quickly but there is an opportunity for them to realize a revenue stream they don't have and also be able to go back to their customers to sell other equipment and services," he said. After meeting with Whalen, Inacom Vice President Greg Richardson became convinced that "WirelessKnowledge clearly is in a position where they are interested in growing the market for wireless data access and acting as a catalyst for the whole industry. They're interested in doing creative things to jump-start wireless data. This is about providing services for the knowledge worker, which is where our business is focused already." Richardson said his company has a large sales force that works with Fortune 3000 companies. They're a natural fit for Revolv, initially through Microsoft Exchange servers but later on with Lotus Notes.