Tadpole buys US m-commerce firm for $3.3m

NEWS Tadpole Technologies has bought US start-up Endeavors Technology for $3.3m. Endeavors is about to release the first version of Magi, a cut-down version of the open-source Web server, Apache, for Java-enabled mobile devices. The software turns the mobile device into a Web server, which means that people can dial directly into the device, rather than going via a remote server. This also means the person dialling in can tell if a colleague is online and can access emails and documents directly, said Bernard Hulme, group chief executive of Tadpole. The purchase represents a shift for Tadpole away from the manufacture of mobile computers towards software development. It has been investing in companies that develop software for GIS (geographical information systems), which was how it first came onto Endeavors, said Hulme. But he added that Magi has much more potential than GIS. "I'm not daft enough to think that I can replace all the enterprise systems everywhere," he said. "But there is potential for companies to hook up their sales forces without expensive customer relationship management and enterprise resource planning applications." Tadpole hopes to make money off the back of the open-source Magi server, with the sale of workflow applications also developed by Endeavors. There are also plans to convert the Magi server, which is based on extensible mark-up language (XML), into a wireless application protocol (WAP) gateway.