SITA and Appear Win “Best Wireless Broadband Mobility Solution” Award at WBI Awards 2009

Context-Aware Mobile Project with Portuguese Airline Receives Top Accolade

Stockholm and Lisbon, April 23rd 2009 – SITA, the specialist airline IT provider, and Appear, the leader in context-aware software infrastructure, today announced that their first joint project won the "Best Wireless Broadband Mobility Solution" that honours outstanding leadership and vision in wireless broadband technologies. The award is in recognition of SITA mobile platform currently being deployed with TAP Maintenance & Engineering (M&E), the leading Portuguese airline carrier.

The solution for the TAP M&E proof-of-concept is a three-tiered architecture, where existing TAP M&E local systems will connect to SITA’s mobile platform hosted in Lisbon and Atlanta.

The new platform will provide common-use access to ATI applications “on demand” over wireless and mobile networks, tackle information overload and allow airlines, ground handlers and other airport customers to escape dependence on manual processes, voice communications and back-office reporting for a wide range of critical operational functions, on an unprecedented scale.

“After a year and a half of internal discussions on how to make the move towards a mobile workforce, the initial meeting with Appear and SITA turned out to be very promising” underscores Fernando Ferreira Matos, IT-Director of TAP M&E. “The customer-process centric approach and the envisaged flexibility of the SITA-Appear solution provide what TAP M&E needs to make this quantum leap”.
Carlos Mendes, Manager of Line Maintenance at TAP added: “TAP M&E has been looking for a year to implement a mobile solution, so the SITA-Appear solution came at a perfect point in time. One of our key objectives was to reduce and avoid flight delays and cancellations and automate the process as much possible by eliminating pencil and paper-based processes.”

TAP M&E foresees that the solution - once rolled-out - will replace much of the existing manual paperwork, improve and speed up radio-communications, provide high levels of efficiency and accuracy in work execution, thereby enhancing reliability of the maintenance and ultimately delivering increased customer satisfaction. As a result, workforce efficiency is expected to increase substantially at its four hubs in Lisbon, Porto, Faro and Funchal.

Per Hagman, VP Sales at Appear, commented: “We are extremely pleased and honoured to receive this industry commendation”. He added: “The award is a tribute to the pioneering work conducted by TAP in order to research innovative wireless solutions that generate significant efficiency gains and enhance aircraft turnaround time. TAP M&E is at the forefront of workforce mobility, and we are delighted to be the enabling software technology behind their most successful projects.”

About Appear: Appear is the leading provider of context-aware software infrastructure designed to power the next generation of mobile applications and services. Using situational information (context), the AppearIQ suite of products transforms ordinary wireless data networks into rich multimedia channels that deliver information, voice, video and messages to mobile computer users. By collecting and sharing context, Appear’s solutions eliminate information overload and ensure users have exactly the information they need, when and where they need it. Industry leaders in transportation, retail, telecommunications and government use AppearIQ. Appear has an extensive partner network including industry leaders Cisco, Motorola, Orange Business Services, SITA, Thales and Logica in order to deliver innovative, end-to-end wireless and mobile solutions. The company is privately held and headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden and with offices across Europe. Read more at www.appearnetworks.com

About TAP Maintenance & Engineering: TAP M&E is the TAP Airline Group’s MRO subsidiary, headquartered in Lisbon with operations in four hubs in Portugal and two in Brazil. Read more at www.tapme.pt

About WBI Awards: The WBI Awards is the only fully independent and globally oriented institution that recognizes leadership and the very best in innovation for Wireless Broadband. Read more at www.wbiawards.com

Press Contacts:
Appear Networks, Kista Science Tower, SE-16451 Kista, Sweden
Angela J. Hepburn
Be-SR SARL Media Relations
+33 6 84 81 51 56
Email: angieh@beseenandread.com

This release was published on openPR.