Nine wireless companies to watch

Wireless and mobile technology is speeding up. This year's crop of companies focuses on voice and data convergence, spectacular technical advances in radio technology, the personalization of cellular, and what can only be called mobile spontaneity.

Want a visual aid? Check out our slideshow of the 2008 wireless/mobile companies worth watching

In our latest update, as always, we focus on products and services that can impact corporate computing. This year we find that smartphone accessories are all the rage, while RFID improvements and keeping energy costs down are but a couple of the leading developments.

Here are nine wireless companies that should be on every network manager's radar.

Company name: Celio Corp.
Founded: July 2006
Location: Salt Lake City, Utah
What does the company offer? The ultimate Windows Mobile smartphone accessory: Redfly, a notebooklike display screen, compact keyboard and mouse. It links to an expanding selection of phones via Bluetooth or USB (with the USB cable, it charges the phone and still gets eight to 10 hours of battery life). No operating system, no CPU, no disk, just a video card that processes the screen from your handset so it's . . . big. Often compared to Palm's ill-fated Foleo device, Redfly differs because it's not something that has to be managed or secured. Drawbacks: no speakers so it's not great for playing "World of Warcraft" online.
Why is it worth watching? Some early users are taking Redfly and deploying it along with remote access and virtualized desktops: handset users now have access to their desktops wirelessly, via a $500 device that doesn't have the ongoing management and security burdens and costs of notebooks. Check out our own video of the Redfly in operation.
How did the company get its start? Main investor VSpring Capital had the idea that the smartphone should be and could be the only computer anyone needed. But to make that possible you needed exactly what the handsets sacrifice: a big screen and a full keyboard. Redfly was designed to fill the gap.
How did the company get its name? Pronounced SEE-lee-oh, it's a play on "cellular" and "i/o."
CEO and background: Kirt Bailey, whose previous job was director of strategic investments at Intel Capital. Earlier, he was general manager for Intel's Network Components Division, a $100-million-a-year business.
Funding: $8 million, from VSpring, founders and angel investors.
Who's using the product? Celio unveiled Redfly on March 31. There are no announced customers, but a company executive says there are hundreds of pilots being run by enterprises with big Microsoft client and server infrastructures.

Company name: GainSpan
Founded: September 2006, as a spin-out from Intel
Location: Los Gatos, Calif.
What does the company offer? A 802.11bg implementation via a dual-core ARM system-on-a-chip, and software, that uses so little power you can run Wi-Fi-based sensors for years on simple batteries. An astonishing achievement when you think how long you can run your notebook's Wi-Fi radio before you get a blank screen. In-depth analysis of where all the power went led to, among other things, the SOC design to cut bus lengths and enable extreme component integration. And it's all IP.
Why is it worth watching? It introduces IP and 802.11 as a viable, and proven, networking technology for wireless sensor networks that can be easily integrated with the enterprise, without gateways, or separate networks and protocols stacks. The vendor claims it has customers with Zigbee, or other protocol-based products, who say they will supplement or replace those products with GainSpan-based Wi-Fi.
How did the company get its start? The company incubated in Intel's New Business Initiatives Group, where co-founders Vijay Parmar and CTO Lewis Adams were exploring sensor networks, drawing on work by Intel Research, and talking extensively with potential customers in building automation and industrial markets. The constant refrain: "we want IP" and "we want integration with the enterprise." Work shifted from the initial focus on a 802.15.4 chip and Zigbee to 802.11.
How did the company get its name? The founders first picked "Emphany Systems" but scrapped it when people kept asking if it was "Infamy Systems." They hired Brighter Naming guru Athol Foden, who put together "gain," a radio term usually referring to improved signal, and "span," the idea of running across different networks and technologies.
CEO and background: Vijay Parmar, also president, who headed up the Intel business unit that was the basis of the GainSpan spinout; formerly an executive with VxTel, a VoIP silicon company, and with AMD in that company's networking, communications and personal computing businesses.
Funding: $20.6 million, with the completion of second-round funding in December 2007, from Intel Capital, New Venture Partners, Opus Capital, OVP Venture Partners, Sigma Partners and CampVentures.
Who's using the product? Shipping in production since December 2007, the chip is or will be used in OEM products from Aginova, RF Digital and most recently Hitachi Plant Technologies. Others will be announced in coming months, according to GainSpan.