May/June 2005

Senior managers at British Airways will be able to access corporate data over their own mobile phones or PDAs in future, following a decision taken by the organisation to adopt OneBridge Mobile Groupware from Extended Systems.

The move comes in the wake of an internal cost review at BA, which has led to a reduction in the number of mobile devices issued to staff. However, the company wanted to give staff the opportunity to maintain mobile access to corporate systems.

The Extended Systems solution is "device-agnostic", and also offers remote management capabilities, and therefore presented the ideal opportunity to give senior BA staff continued real-time system access without imposing additional burdens on IT departments.

Initially the company has taken out 500 user licences. Users will now be able to synchronise their e-mail, calendar and contact information via the corporate e-mail server.

 

BA is a long-time user of Extended Systems' "legacy" XTNDConnect Server, so it was aware of the possibilities offered by this supplier. A key attraction of the new system is said to have been its ability to handle installation on individual devices remotely, using a client deployment "wizard", and reducing administrative costs.