Following recent announcements of its commitment to mobile technology, HP yesterday opened the Johannesburg branch of Cooltown, the company`s showcase venue for current and future mobile trends.
[VIDEO]Opening the centre, Doug McGowan, GM, service providers and mobile solutions, said: "With this new facility, HP helps enterprise transform the way they operate and serve their customers."
Located in Rivonia, Gauteng, the centre incorporates technology from HP as well as other companies to demonstrate the future potential of many current technologies. While not exclusively mobile technologies, the majority is in line with HP`s mobile strategy.
HP has already opened a number of Cooltown branches around the world, but this is the first of its type in Africa and only the third outside the US.
[VIDEO]Besides the demonstration possibilities of Cooltown, the centre also incorporates HP`s Invent Centre, a global initiative to structure collaborative development projects. The Invent Centre is "a programmatic architectural approach for researchers and developers to create services and environments, and to participate in a community of like-minded experts," said McGowan.
The global Invent Centre network includes more than 400 international technology partners.
Jos Nickmans, MD of HP South Africa, said the Invent Centre is "taking technologies and pushing them to their limit".
Hayward Rose, mobile e-services consultant for HP South Africa, said Cooltown creates an "environment where customers can see solutions actually working". He added that many technologies were not immediately suitable for local conditions and "the role of the centre is to take solutions and find the ones appropriate for our environment".
[VIDEO]Demonstrations at the centre include bi-directional SMS tools, instant messaging systems that are aware of the location of users, Bluetooth solutions, as well as telemetry solutions for vehicle security.
The opening of Cooltown follows close on the heels of last week`s international announcement of HP`s renewed commitment to mobile technology. The announcement included a number of new product releases such as a mobile advertising solution, the HP Opencall media platform and a new wireless HP print server.
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