April/May 2003

Mobile workforce productivity is set to be enhanced as a result of an agreement by three IT giants to work together on a "suite of mobile capabilities". This, at any rate, is the hope of SAP, Hewlett Packard and Vodafone, who have signed a letter of intent on the plan.

SAP will be providing the enterprise business infrastructure through its mySAP Mobile Business suite, while Vodafone will provide its mobile communications capability. HP will be offering a range of computing platforms, starting with iPAQ Pocket PCs, notebook and tablet PCs plus mobile printers, and extending to its ProLiant servers, Itanium 2-based HP servers, Superdome servers and AlphaServers.

SAP says it will be able to offer a universal platform and ready-made scenarios for all popular devices, in both connected and disconnected environments.