Sun Gives Enterprises a New Mobility Option

Enterprises that run applications on Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) servers can now give their mobile workers access to those applications, using Sun’s Mobile Enterprise Platform (MEP). Sun has made MEP available, a little more than two months after it put the platform out to beta at Java One in May.

MEP 1.0, announced on Sun’s blog with little fanfare, enables synchronization with enterprise applications for mobile devices and smart phones including RIM’s (NASDAQ: RIMM) BlackBerry and Palm’s (NASDAQ: PALM) Treo. It “lets enterprises give their distributed workforce access to the application they’re building with the rest of our stack,” Paul Hinz, director of Sun’s application platform group and Java enterprise systems, told InternetNews.com.

The platform is based on open standards, and is built around Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server, MySQL and Java ME (define). It provides two-way data synchronization with security, device management and offline access features for enterprises with Sun servers in their infrastructure.

“MEP’s an end to end solution that can integrate data from a wide range of back end applications such as CRM, logistics applications or whatever … massage the data and make it mobile ready, and transfer it onto your mobile platform,” Satish Hemachandran, product line manager with Sun’s application platform group, told InternetNews.com. It is a device-agnostic platform that has out-of-the-box support for a “vast library” of connectors, he added.

The move is a logical one for Sun. “A lot of the big guys have done this on the PC side, building enterprise platforms for IT, and they now realize the growth is within the mobile enterprise,” IDC analyst Ryan Reith told InternetNews.com. “They need to make sure that information goes securely across virtual private networks and follows IT security policies.”

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