Wireless Road Warriors

Friday, Apr. 19, 2002
The wireless revolution has certainly been a boon to the road warriors of the corporate world. Any company that has a mobile workforce will realize how useful and efficient it is to enable its travelling employees wireless access to corporate data, including e-mails, price lists or product specifications. But as helpful as technology often is, we all know from experience that it doesn't always work perfectly. Wireless connections sometimes break down when a user enters a no-coverage zone. And mobile links are not always secure, which is a big concern to companies wanting to protect their data.

But problems are said to be opportunities in disguise. And that's what the co-founders of Sweden's Columbitech (www.columbitech.com) realized when they decided they could offer solutions to some of the problems bedeviling remote wireless access. CEO Pontus Bergdahl is a former McKinsey & Company consultant who co-founded the company two years ago with four technicians from Ericsson, the mobile phone manufacturer. Columbitech is a provider of virtual private network (VPN) software that's based on the WTLS mobile security platform. Clearly, no software company can do much to stop a communications breakdown if a user goes through a no-coverage zone. But Columbitech says its products can mitigate the inconvenience. With its technology, users can reconnect directly to where they were before without having to log in again, and without having lost any data.

Security is also central to Columbitech's remit, Bergdahl says. Columbitech's target clients are multinationals and governmental bodies, "and they are very security conscious," he explains. Securing wireless connections is a challenge because most technology relies on solutions created for the wired world. That's why Columbitech bases its products on the WTLS platform, which is designed for mobile security. Moreover, Bergdahl says, traditional security solutions can degrade the performance of wireless connections, slowing them down and making disconnections all too common.

Columbitech also uses compression technology that further ensures faster, thus cheaper, connections. It also automatically chooses the fastest available networks. That will remain important, he says, even when the next generation of mobile networks, which will offer fast broadband connections, come on line. As bandwidth grows, so will consumption. "Bandwidth will always be an issue," Bergdahl insists. Columbitech says it is the only company currently offering all this technology in one product, which sets it apart from rivals like Nokia and Certicom. Its clients include the telecom TeleDenmark, and the Swedish city of Gothenburg. It also has partnerships with such companies as IBM and Compaq.

Columbitech has so far raised $4.6 million in funding, and expects to have its first profitable month early in the new year. So far, it has sales in Sweden and other European Union countries, but soon expects to begin operations in the United States, "pending some anticipated partnerships," Berghahl says. For a company that helps road warriors remain connected while they travel, it makes sense to do a bit of global roaming, as well.