3Com Palm seeking corporates

Hardware Networking vendor will look to its OEM partners for access into the UK enterprise market.

3Com's Palm Computing unit has set its sights on the enterprisecess into the UK enterprise market. market with the latest release of its Palm handheld device, hoping to capitalise on rising trends in mobile and remote working practices.

The Palm III X, which will be launched officially on 22 February, will be pitched at corporates and 3Com is planning to employ the reseller channel of its OEM partners to access corporate business.

Owain Harries, UK distribution and channel sales manager at Palm Computing, told PC Dealer that with such agreements Palm users will have the ability to 'take bespoke corporate data and allow them to access it in a way they couldn't before'.

He listed Computer Associates, SAP and helpdesk software vendor Remedy as vendors that 3Com hopes will facilitate its drive into the enterprise space. 'We are also talking to their customers,' Harries said, adding that Palm Computing's relationship with Bull and Logica would also provide avenues for corporate custom.

Palm Computing has three distributors in the UK - Ingram Micro, C2000, Hugh Symons Mobile Data - as well as Clarity Distribution in Ireland.

As part of its push into the corporate area, Palm Computing struck a licensing agreement with Sun Microsystems last week that will provide data synchronisation between the Palm handheld devices and applications running on Sun workstations.

As a result of the arrangement, Sun's customers will be able to synchronise desktop applications such as mail and calendar managers with their Palm devices.

3Com was forced to cease and desist from using of the name 'PalmPilot' after a mutual agreement with pen manufacturer Pilot, reached in December last year.