Ford Motor Co. Thursday expanded its
deployment of AvantGo Inc.‘s enterprise
software, allowing its workers to access intranet content via handheld devices.
Financial terms were not disclosed, but AvantGo said it charges corporate
customers a one-time fee and a per user charge.
Ford said it went with AvantGo’s software because it provides
time-to-market advantages is cost effective for its large corporation.
For Ford, AvantGo software provides timely updates to handheld devices from
the corporate intranet withoutrequiring the company to invest in additional
development resources or write additional code.
Using AvantGo, Ford employees with mobile devices are also accessing
interactive and personalized content and applications from
name-brand content publishers and e-businesses through the AvantGo mobile
Internet service.
“With AvantGo, we are able to respond more quickly in this rapidly changing
marketplace because we can give our executives around the world access to
supplier information, sales figures and other key business metrics on their
mobile devices,” said Jim Yost, Ford Motor Co. vice president and chief
information officer.
For AvantGo, the play is a hallmark of its enterprise initiative, launched
in May. The strategy is representative of its desire to move from catering
to individual personal digital assistant users to target larger firms’
corporate bankrolls.
Before expanding its suite, AvantGo offered individual users a free software
download that allows devices to receive content from sites, such as The
New York Times and Salon, on their PDAs.
