Colligo signs licensing agreement with Palm, mobile collaboration gains credibility

Colligo Networks has licensed its peer-to-peer collaboration software to one of the world’s largest handheld device manufacturers, providing the Vancouver-based company some international muscle to promote its portable collaboration applications. Palm Inc. of Santa Clara CA has licensed two of Colligo’s Portable Collaborative Networking (PCN) applications, BlueChat and BlueBoard, that it will in turn offer as part of a Bluetooth expansion card. Colligo executives say the deal with well-known Palm is just the first of several high-profile agreements to come. The company, formerly known as SynchroPoint Wireless, has wrapped up a whirlwind month of announcements, unveiling details of an agreement with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and finalizing a US$3.5-million major funding round (RoW Update, Feb. 11/02). It all culminated in the announcement of the Palm licensing agreement. With a large and growing user base for Palm-based devices, there is considerable upside to the deal, which could see millions of professionals using these applications within the next couple of years. Colligo president and CEO Barry Jinks admits that much of that potential user base depends on Palm’s distribution strategy, but says the deal certainly adds credibility to the company’s technology. "It’s certainly validation that our portable collaboration (applications), and the concepts that we built the company on, have validity with real customers," he tells Report on Wireless. Colligo is developing some compelling applications to allow users to share and exchange data over various types of wireless communication links (RoW, Sept. 18/01). BlueChat and BlueBoard are the company’s first products to support the Bluetooth short-haul wireless communication protocol. Palm plans to immediately roll out the applications to business professionals in every country of the world, except for the United States. A U.S. rollout is anticipated later this year, however. While previously thought to be limited to cable replacement, Bluetooth has gained some support for broader applications, and Palm’s Bluetooth strategy is a testament to that. The California company’s strategy for its Bluetooth card hinges on three elements: connectivity, communications, and collaboration. "I think that they have seen the light and realized the value of the portable collaboration technology we’re providing," Jinks says. "I really believe we introduced them to the concept of portable collaboration and as a result, they liked our concepts and eventually licensed our applications." More on the horizon for the growing company Colligo isn’t resting on its laurels following the Palm licensing agreement. Jinks tells RoW that it has several products in the pipeline and several other potential customers with which it hopes to soon sign agreements. Nor is the firm limiting its future plans to the Palm operating system. Colligo plans to introduce a product later this spring compatible with Microsoft Corp.’s PocketPC platform. There will also be more complex products coming out in the future. Much like the PwC application, which enables the synchronization of 20 Mbs accounting and auditing files, "we have some interesting applications coming down the pipe which are significantly more complicated than what we’ve produced with BlueBoard and BlueChat," says Jinks, adding that these will work on wireless-equipped laptops. "Our plan this year is to launch six new products, so we’ve got quite a few products in the hopper," he notes, adding that the company is also looking at potentially forming some strategic alliances.

Colligo signs licensing agreement with Palm, mobile collaboration gains credibility

News | 03/05/2002 5:00 am EST

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