Windows Mobile Gets a 5250 Emulator from BlueZone

September 23, 2008 Alex Woodie

BlueZone Software, a subsidiary of Rocket Software, last week rolled out BlueZone Mobile, a 3270/5250 terminal emulator for touchscreen smartphones running the Microsoft Windows Mobile operating system.

BlueZone Mobile is the latest client interface designed to work with BlueZone Access Server, the company’s three-tier terminal emulation suite for accessing AS/400s, mainframes, and Unix hosts over the HTTP and HTTPS protocols. Because of that three-tier architecture, BlueZone Mobile users moving between cell phone towers or WiFi access points will be able to tolerate poor or intermittent connectivity without losing their emulation session, which would ordinarily plague a standard Telnet connection in a two-tier environment, BlueZone says.

The new Windows Mobile emulator is well suited for several applications, BlueZone says, including: mobile salespeople; field services; medical or hospital environments; forklift and truck drivers; and satellite-connected offices.

The new generation of smartphones are finally mature enough to support enterprise-level emulation, according to Steve Bireley, senior vice president of product development at BlueZone. “Mobile technologies have finally come of age,” he says. “The latest network and device technologies allow today’s workforce to be more mobile than ever. BlueZone Mobile provides those workers with reliable access to critical legacy data wherever they happen to be.”

Other mobile clients from BlueZone include the Mobile Web 2.0 Emulator, a Web-based terminal emulator for browser-equipped smartphones that support JavaScript, including the Apple iPhone and Palm Treo; and the BlueZone ActiveX Client.

BlueZone is a Virginia-based company that was originally called Renex before being acquired by Seagull Software in 2001; Seagull, you will remember, was bought by Rocket in December 2006. The BlueZone Access Server product was originally developed by Farabi, which Seagull acquired in March 2006.