Business Travel News - May 5, 2008 - (Page 17)

TRAVEL MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGY BTNonline.com DAVID MEYER Editor-in-Chief (646) 654-4431 (dmeyer@btnonline.com) CHRIS DAVIS Executive Managing Editor (646) 654-4437 (cdavis@btnonline.com) JAY BOEHMER Airline Editor (646) 654-4434 (jboehmer@btnonline.com) MICHAEL B. BAKER Hotel, Expense/Payment Editor (646) 654-4433 (mbaker@btnonline.com) SETH HARRIS Travel Management Editor (646) 654-5716 (sharris@btnonline.com) ELISSA HUNTER Meetings, Ground Transportation Editor (646) 654-4432 (ehunter@btnonline.com) ERIC WONG Art Director (646) 654-4439 (ewong@btnonline.com) • CONTRIBUTING EDITORS AMON COHEN +44 (0) 1963-351-219 PATTY DONMOYER (pdonmoyer@aol.com) We welcome your letters, comments and feedback. Please contact the editor at dmeyer@btnonline.com. For breaking news and original research, and to search articles since 1996, visit BTNonline.com. Laptop Bans Driving Mobile Payment Demand BY MICHAEL B. BAKER NANCY LAZARUS Research Director • SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES (847) 763-9050 Fax: (847) 763-9037 LIST RENTAL/POSTAL INFORMATION JULIUS SINGLE (845) 731-2731 E-MAIL INFORMATION WAYNE NAGROWSKI (845) 731-3854 CUSTOM REPRINTS OF 500 PIECES OR MORE: KRISTI FULKERSON, The YGS Group (800) 290-5460, ext. 144 (BTN@TheYGSgroup.com) BTN EDITORIAL & SALES OFFICES 770 Broadway New York, NY 10003-9595 Editorial Fax: (646) 654-4455 All Rights Reserved A ban by some companies on traveling with laptops because of data security concerns is creating more demand for travel booking and expense reporting applications on BlackBerry and other mobile devices, according to suppliers. Travel suppliers providing services on mobile platforms include such online booking suppliers as TRX and GetThere and such expense reporting suppliers as CyberShift’s Necho, which last year partnered with Boston-based Vaultus Mobile Technologies to offer an edition of its expense tool that allowed clients to create and manage expense reports through their BlackBerry devices (BTNonline, Sept. 10, 2007). CyberShift recently published a white paper citing data from the Privacy Rights Clearing House indicating that about one-third of data breach events stem from a laptop theft. In addition, an April 21 federal appeals court decision gave customs officials at U.S. border crossings authority to examine, copy and seize travelers’ laptops even without reasonable suspicions, according to the Association of Corporate Travel Executives. “This decision will have significant impact on business travelers who have no idea their data is subject to search and seizure,” ACTE global executive director Susan Gurley said. CyberShift senior product director Craig Fearon sees the mandate to stop travelers from carrying laptops CRAIG FEARON CyberShift senior product director coming most frequently from financial services organizations. “They’ve had a number of incidents of financial advisors traveling with laptops that disappeared during screening at the airport or were stolen out of rental cars,” he said. Fearon said questions regarding mobile capabilities have begun appearing more frequently on incoming requests for proposals. “We have clients that are looking for that specifically,” he said. Early adopters of Necho’s tool— an application specifically for the BlackBerry, not a scaled-down Web version that Fearon said would be less secure—generally have trended toward the financial and other highsecurity sectors. He said it’s following a similar pattern as receipt imaging, which has become more prevalent as technology matures. “It’s been slow to build in terms of the interest of the number of clients we had,” Fearon said. “It’s nowhere close to adoption rates for imaging, but it’s definitely the wave in which we believe expense reporting is going.” Necho’s next step, possibly by the end of May, is to begin piloting a version of the BlackBerry tool that lets managers review and approve submitted expense reports on their devices, Fearon said, noting the demand for the application comes directly from corporate clients, for such devices often are in the hands of senior managers. “This is the next round of development,” Fearon said. “It’s that goal of providing that level of convenience and increasing the turnaround time for approval.” ■ mbaker@btnonline.com ■ Travelport G2 Buy To Retool Agent Desktop BY SETH HARRIS Travelport GDS in April announced the acquisition of some of G2 SwitchWorks’ “software assets and intellectual property,” which it plans to use to develop a multi-global distribution system point-of-sale agent desktop application to replace the Galileo FocalPoint/ViewPoint and Worldspan Go solutions, beginning in early 2009. Travelport’s point-of-sale solution also will deliver a new airline retailing platform for merchandizing, upselling and unbundling products and services. Travelport GDS CIO Sue Powers said some of these features will be launched with the point-of-sale application in early 2009, with some even sooner in Travelport GDSs. The deal includes G2’s not-yet-released Kestrel pointof-sale application, its corresponding Web services platform, software development tools and automated business rules engine, which will drive the integration of the Apollo, Galileo and Worldspan GDSs. Travelport also acquired both a traveler profile database and a universal records database residing outside of the GDS that will integrate GDS and non-GDS content and online booking tool reservation data. “One of SUE POWERS our key strategies is for Travelport GDS CIO our customers to be able to access those three GDS cores from a common worldwide desktop,” said Powers. “We also plan to bring in access to other GDS systems outside of the three that we own.” ■ sharris@btnonline.com ■ www.BTNonline.com Monday, May 5, 2008 Business Travel News 17 http://BTNonline.com http://BTNonline.com http://www.BTNonline.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Business Travel News - May 5, 2008

Business Travel News - May 5, 2008
Contents
Inside Track
Profile
BTN Research
Aviation
Lodging
Travel Management
Travel Management Tech
Executive Dashboard
Corporate Travel World
Destinations

Business Travel News - May 5, 2008