In a carefully choreographed speech, Nokia customer Peter Johnston, regional VP of IT, Asia Pacific at WPP outlined some of his frustrations of having recently using a Nokia smartphone while traveling for two weeks in several countries.
Among his gripes were having to switch telecom operates in different countries, which underscores how the technology is not yet dummy-proof (read: not yet ready for use by workers other than high-level executives).
Johnston said he also wants to be able to effectively view, zoom, download and edit applications on his smartphone. Additionally, Johnston – that is the average enterprise user – wants USB-drive integration, projector interface, seamless web browsing and VPN support on their smartphones.
Enterprises will pay for data services, Johnston said. We do have the money if the capabilities are there to deliver corporation information on our applications to people in the field.
Keynote speaker Mary McDowell, Nokia senior VP and general manger of enterprise solutions, later said that Nokia was working with its partners to overcome these obstacles.
We are making a lot of enhancements to devices specifically for enterprises, McDowell said. That includes enhanced levels of security, a new mobile VPN client and a switch to multi-radio technology. And I take to heart [Johnston’s comments] on some of the enhancements we can do on the browsers, she said.
Nokia also is planning to address the huge, unserved market of corporate e-mail.Enterprise e-mail is the focus of the new Nokia Business Center software, announced earlier this month, because it does seem to be the biggest opportunity, McDowell said.
The hole we see in the marketplace that we don’t think any of our partners are addressing yet is lowering the barriers to widespread deployment of e-mail, she said.
With its new enterprise software, which McDowell said would ship in the fourth quarter, Nokia can bring corporate e-mail to the masses.
