Mobile gets down to business

Verizon, Sybase and Quickcomm team up to manage corporations' mobility needs. Their service just scratches the surface

Chen wants to help your company go mobile. Photo: Sybase

Telecom giant Verizon (VZ) says it is launching a suite of services to help corporate IT departments manage their fleets of mobile devices. Corporate clients can hire Verizon to track their inventories of phones and monitor billings, add and drop devices as employees come and go, enforce security policies on phones and even remotely deliver applications and data to employees' handsets.

Verizon is partnering with software company Sybase (SY) and Quickcomm, which specializes in telecom-expense management, to offer a one-stop shop for companies looking to outsource mobile operations.

Analysts' reports suggest there's a need for such tools: Forrester Research estimates that by 2012 nearly three-fourths of workers worldwide, or nearly 400 million people, will be using mobile devices for work. More