“Pervasive computing is all about giving people convenient
access to relevant information and the ability to act on that
information anytime, anywhere. In the context of e-business, it
translates into increased sales, better customer service, and lower
transaction costs. A pervasive computing-enabled e-business is
often called a wireless e-business.“In this article, we’ll develop an example field force
automation application that network-marketing agents will use on
their sales routes. These agents can use a handheld device, like a
PDA, to respond quickly to their customers and their business
centers.“Although we will demonstrate with IBM solutions here, you can
implement this process with related open or proprietary solutions.
The IBM solutions are based on open standards and seamlessly
integrate together, as well as with other leading e-business
application suites and middleware. Thus, they provide developers
with greater flexibility and choice. Most of these offerings from
IBM are supported on Linux, an open source operating system apart
from other platforms like Palm OS, QNX, and others. Choosing Linux
as the platform substantially reduces the total ownership
costs…”