Recently, a lot of people have been asking for an update on Bullhorn’s mobile strategy. Obviously, this is driven in part by the importance of mobile devices in today’s business world, but I also think the parade of exciting new phones that are now coming to market has a lot of people thinking about making an upgrade. Whether it’s the new iPhone, the Palm Pre, the Blackberry Bold, or the numerous phones built on Google’s Android platform, there is something new to make every gadget lover envious, and plenty to draw new participants into the smartphone fold.

There are three main prongs to Bullhorn’s mobile strategy, and we plan to make advancements in all three during 2009. I spoke about most of these at Bullhorn Live in February, but here is a recap and an update. First, our goal is to make sure that the groupware data (calendar, contacts, email, tasks) stored in Bullhorn can be efficiently synchronized with your phone. Today, we already support Windows Mobile, Palm and Symbian (Nokia) devices, and our goal for this year is to expand the list to include Blackberry, iPhone and the Palm Pre. So far, we have the Blackberry solution in beta testing with a large number of customers. We hope to release it to all Bullhorn customers this summer. At the same time, we’re well on our way to delivering a solution for iPhone users that uses the same ActiveSync protocol used to synch with Microsoft Exchange, and should also work with the new Palm and Android phones. This solution will be in beta this summer as well. If you’re interested in participating, please send an email with your contact information to beta@bullhorn.com.

Second, we know that sometimes you not only need to look at your email but to look up a contact or add a note about the meeting you just left. Today, users can do that through Bullhorn Mobile, a phone-optimized version of the Bullhorn application. Until recently, using mobile web applications was painful but now with 3G connections becoming much more common, I expect to see a lot more people clamoring for access, so this Fall we’re planning to make a number of enhancements — both to the visual appearance of the application and to its capabilities. I have a number of things I’d like to see added, but if you haven’t already made your suggestions, make sure to check out Bullhorn Brainstorm, where you can vote for ideas that already have traction or add new ones that haven’t yet appeared.

Lastly, even though I firmly believe we are seeing the steep part of the adoption curve with smartphone capabilities, there is still nothing with quite the reach and immediacy of text messaging. As we demonstrated at Bullhorn Live, we plan to make sending SMS messages a built-in part of the Bullhorn platform. We’ve been spending a lot of time talking with customers about how they would use this feature, and we have some great plans lined up for the Fall season. Stay tuned for more information as we get closer to beta.

As you can probably tell, I’m excited about the progress we’re making this year on mobile technology. It’s a rapidly changing landscape, which often makes real progress difficult, but the hard work on the first half of 2009 is now starting to pay off, and we’re looking forward to delivering some significant capabilities to our customers, starting in just a few weeks.

Posted on Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 at 7:48 am and is filed under Enhancements Coming Soon, Product and Development Blog, Brainstorm.