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After helping a stable of 75 well-known customers port enterprise applications from the desktop to the mobile environment over the past eight years, Boston-based Vaultus Mobile Technologies Inc. is launching the second generation of its technology, providing the tools to help enterprises to do it themselves.
The launch, which will be made next week at Gartner Inc.’s Wireless & Mobile Summit, coincides with a relaunch of the company as well, marking the first product rollout since Vaultus was recapitalized last February. Dubbed mobiScaler, the idea is simple — provide enterprise applications in the mobile environment while maintaining a performance level similar to a desktop environment.
The execution of such a premise, however, has been a hindrance to the mobile industry for years. Unlike the desktop and Internet environments, the mobile ecosystem is home to dozens of carriers working on hundreds of handsets running a handful of operating systems. Developers, therefore, have traditionally built applications one at a time, on a per-platform basis.
“These companies have invested millions in their back office and sales software and are having a hard time getting that information to a mobile device,” said David Birnbach, CEO of Vaultus, which spun out of MIT in 2000. “Everybody wants to get them into the mobile environment, but the trick is building the applications for multiple platforms.”
MobiScaler provides a means with which to do so. Similar to a universal development kit, mobiScaler sits as part of an enterprise network, between a company’s applications such as customer relationship management software and the mobile device. In-house developers need to design one mobile application for the software, and it will be pushed to users on any network, using any common operating system, including Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Apple, J2ME, and Symbian. Compatibility with Google Inc.’s Android is coming in the third quarter of this year, said Birnbach.
David Mahoney, a former board member and CEO of Westborough-based CRM software developer Applix Inc., joined the 45-person company’s board last February. He said Vaultus’ technology hits at the root problems holding back widespread adoption of enterprise applications on mobile devices.
“Enterprises are going to eventually have to look at their mobile applications as they do their desktop applications, and that means creating an application once and running quickly,” he said.
Among Vaultus’ customers is E-Trade Group Inc., which launched its mobile application using Vaultus last spring. According to a case study researched by Tower Group in Needham, daily average revenue trades using the mobile system increased 139 percent from August to October of last year.
Vaultus had a 52 percent increase in revenue in 2008, and, with the launch of mobiScaler, officials expect to double revenue this year.
Originally backed by CMGI Inc. and New York-based Investcorp, Vaultus was recapitalized last year, with $6 million from Investcorp, IDG Ventures, Susquehanna International Group LLP and Point Judith Capital Partners.
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