Cingular, NetMotion announce strategic partnership

Cingular Wireless yesterday announced that it will sell NetMotion Wireless’ Mobility XE as its mobile VPN solution for its data customers—the first time NetMotion has forged such a relationship with a commercial wireless carrier.

“It’s single-point provisioning,” said Lee Johnson, senior product marketing manager for NetMotion Wireless. “When a Cingular sales representative is talking with one of their customers, they’ll be talking about a voice and data plan, they’ll be talking about the devices [the customer will] be using, and they’ll be talking about wireless software. We’re their wireless-software provider.”

With Cingular supporting almost 2000 public-safety agencies and “hundreds” of enterprise-class organizations, the strategic partnership represents a “great opportunity” for NetMotion, Johnson said. Roots of the relationship date back to the time when AT&T Wireless—now part of Cingular—used NetMotion’s solutions to help transition data customers from static-IP technologies like CDPD to higher-speed, dynamic-IP technologies such as GPRS and EDGE, he said.

Johnson said “there is a certain level of exclusivity around” the Cingular-NetMotion deal and that the relationship “is very important to us.” However, Mobility XE still will be available to be used in conjunction with wireless networks from other carriers, such as Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel, he said.

Meanwhile, NetMotion forging a close sales relationship with a wireless carrier outside of Cingular’s U.S. territory is a definite possibility, Johnson said.

“I think it’s very likely that we’d see something similar to this type of relationship outside the U.S.,” he said.

While Cingular’s initial interest in the Mobility XE platform primarily was driven by the need ensure session persistence for public-safety organizations, such characteristics also are desirable to many enterprises, said Laura Johnson, Cingular’s senior director of enterprise solutions.

“Cingular’s new Mobility XE solution from NetMotion Wireless eliminates the risk of having applications interrupted and data lost, particularly when responding to emergency situations,” Laura Johnson said in a prepared statement. “They are able to pick up where they left off even if they temporarily travel out of coverage.

“This ability to maintain continuous and secure application access will provide our government customers with an even higher level of comfort and confidence when working in a mobile environment. And the same benefits apply to the enterprise.”