Motorola Monday announced that the next generation of its Good Mobility Suite, shipping in the fourth quarter, will support continuous, secure access to wireless business applications, moving the product beyond wireless messaging.

Motorola purchased Good Technology a year ago, and now has about 10,000 business customers on the wireless e-mail service, said Dan Rudolph, marketing director at Good, in a recent interview. The business customers range in size from five users to 20,000 users, although Good has never publicly revealed how many subscribers it has.

The Good wireless e-mail is somewhat similar to that of Research in Motion's e-mail approach in that both use a network operations center to bolster security. Good supports a variety of mobile devices and operating systems, while RIM relies on its own BlackBerry devices and operating system.

Rudolph said the Good Mobility Suite, version 6.0, will ship in the fourth quarter, and will cost US$50 to $100 per user for a lifetime license to support business applications wirelessly and securely, in addition to the $50 to $100 lifetime license already required per user for wireless e-mail access. He claimed it is the first managed service virtual private network for wireless applications.

The 6.0 version will also include a new administration center to allow IT managers to have a central console to manage devices and applications over the air, Rudolph said.

Analysts said a majority of US businesses are expected to support a business application wirelessly from a central location in the next few years, although there are already many examples of truck fleets using wireless handhelds to connect to headquarters to find parts or a route to the next service job. One of the biggest limitations on the growth of access to wireless applications has been insufficient security.