Drover goes wireless and IBM

A new wireless application has been named after Australia’s initial mobile worker - the Drover. Aimed at the mining and utilities industries, mDroverT from West Australia’s Yambay, software developer for handheld computers, has been incorporated into the IBM PartnerWorld development community.

The new application is currently being piloted by a number of utilities and mining companies in Australia. End users are able to access their SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems on the move via a GPRS connection to a Palm personal digital assistant (PDA) using the Yambay solution.

The partnership with IBM means that the mDroverT and MACHT Wireless Platforms from Yambay can be integrated with IBM WebSphere EveryplaceT, DB2T, and eServerT infrastructures to create a wireless network.

Leon Levit, Yambay CEO, said, “We expect to have five tenders in play in the utility sector in Australia alone within the next six months. This is a significant market for Yambay as we estimate that there are more than 100 utilities in Asia and more than 1000 in North America.”

IBM bolstered its support for independent software vendors (ISV) in Australia in December 2002 with the opening of a new Technology Centre. At the opening they told Image & Data Manager that the centre signifies their commitment to open standards and not proprietary systems such as Microsoft’s .NET. Australian independent software vendors building applications for the Linux, IBM, Websphere and J2EE operating environments will be supported by a new IBM Technology Centre.

Unveiling the new centre in Sydney, IBM said the centre would “assist Australian software developers in making their products available on IBM’s open hardware and software platforms.” Katrina Troughton, the general manager for software at IBM Australia/New Zealand said that all ISVs would be assessed on a case by case basis, but would not comment on whether .NET applications would be welcomed in the Technology Centre.

”Fundamentally the core of IBM has been to spread open standards such as J2EE and Linux,” she said.

In a statement, Philip Bullock, CEO and managing director of IBM Australia and New Zealand, said the next phase of e-business would be driven by software and hardware based on open standards, rather than tied to one vendor’s platform. He added, “If you think of the utility concept of IT, you must have open standards.”

The IBM Technology Centre will allow vendors to port their applications to IBM hardware and software; benchmark test the applications; demonstrate to and educate potential end users.

It is envisaged that the centre will increase the number of applications available on IBM software and hardware. Amongst the platforms available for porting and benchmarking to are, iSeries, pSeries and xSeries IBM servers; WebSphere, Domino, DB2 and Linux.

More than 40 ISVs have already used the centre, which is the fifth technology centre in the Asia Pacific region.