In the air

SBN Cleveland, May 01, 2000 by Klein, Dustin S

Percy Bhathena is your typical Internet CEO. With short-cropped hair, glasses, a penchant for video games and casually clad in a button down shirt, there's little to distinguish him from other 20-something Web gurus.

Like many of his peers, Bhathena exhibits an easy, friendly manner, despite the grueling hours and quick pace that are. commonplace for fledgling netpreneurs. And like his contemporaries, Bhathena is open about his business, WISP (Wireless Internet Solution Providers), its operations and his plans to position WISP to compete from a geographical location not exactly known as a hotbed for Internet startups.

While WISP has yet to make a lot of noise in the field, if Cleveland is ever to become a player in the high-tech world, it's people like Bhathena who will lead us there. That's why Cleveland needs to focus its resources on the future.

When Bhathena begins to discuss his vision for applications of

wireless Internet service beyond simply connecting to the Internet on

the fly, the unassuming 25-year-old suddenly grabs your attention. You

listen intently as he explains how those applications can benefit

industries you wouldn't normally consider, wondering how, indeed, it

could work. And then he pulls out a prototype for one of those ideas

and you realize Bhathena may be on to something big.

The prototype is a software application for Palm Pilots and other handheld personal digital assistants (PDAs) that, requires users to sign in before providing access. It's designed around the idea of biometrics to authenticate the signature, and if that sounds one step away from a retinal scan, the comparison is not that, far off.

Explains Bhathena, "We were looking for a way to lock access to the mechanism (Palm Pilot), so that we could ensure security. The software allows you to sign directly onto the screen. It learns your signature and then compares the sign in to the signature that's been burned in."

What's even more intriguing is that it's nearly impossible to forge your way in, says Bhathena. That's because as the device learns your signature, it also measures the average time it takes to sign your name, how many times the stylus leaves the screen and several other variables that ensure forgery is next to impossible.

So if you try to copy the signature, or even sign a piece of tape and put it over the device to trace, your odds of gaining access are minimal, at best,. In fact, the design is such, says Bhathena, that it's equivalent to using a password several hundred characters long.

For Bhathena, its this type of creativity and solution seeking that drives WISP's business model. This specific prototype was designed with two clients in mind, Bhathena explains, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and a consortium of New York area hospitals.

The New York financial giant wants to issue Palm units to its external sales staff and keep them connected to the company's network system through a wireless Internet connection. The doctors would like to find ways to use Palm Pilots to write prescriptions and e-mail them directly to pharmacies. The hospitals are exploring the possibility of using hand-held devices to maintain patient records and migrate to a paperless database system.

WISP's involvement began because of its wireless technology, but even its programmers weren't initially able to overcome Morgan Stanley's concerns about security. What safeguards, asked Morgan Stanley execs, were in place to ensure that no one could get unauthorized access to the financial giant's sensitive information or that if a hand-held unit were stolen, the perpetrator couldn't access the device?

The solution arrived in what some would consider an unconventional way, but for Bhathena and his

team, it was actually part of their process.

"We were playing video games around the office one night, and as we were a bit more relaxed, started thinking about potential solutions. We thought we could build frame relays to accommodate all the security issues that were raised about connecting sensitive networks directly to the Internet," he says, matter-of-factly. "So we got permission from the network operation centers (NOC) to put a WISP box directly on top and reroute private pipes to our network. That seemed to do the job."

In layman's terms, WISP would create a private connection to the Net while still using a public network system for access and transport. The second concern - a stolen unit - was addressed through the signature encryption software.

"Nobody's doing it that way," he says. "It was a solution waiting to be found."

Such is the fast-moving world of WISP Bhathena founded the company two years ago with two friends. Today, he employs seven at WISPs Cleveland office, three in Washington D.C., one in Pittsburgh and one in Denver. The company may not be raking in millions, but Bhathena proudly claims, "We're an Internet company that's no longer losing money."

Add to that WISPs highprofile client list, which includes J.P. Morgan and Merrill Lynch, and his group of technology partners, which includes Bell Atlantic, Hughes Network Systems and Penn State University, and Bhathena's goal of growth through strategic partnerships becomes clear.