Sproqit seems to have solved the problem that afflicts almost every serious business user: how do you get access to your Microsoft Outlook data when you are not at your PC? What's more, Sproqit's solution will work on anything from a notebook PC to the humblest smart phone, including Pocket PC, Palm and Symbian handhelds. It doesn't even need Java.

So far, solutions to the Outlook problem have taken two different routes: synchronisation and remote access. The first obvious idea is to synchronise the portable device with the desktop system, and take a copy of the data away with you. This is not a bad idea, but if your Outlook PST (personal storage file) is a couple of hundred megabytes, you can rarely take more than the most recent entries. It also means your portable device has to have expensive memory, processing power, and a decent screen -- something like a Compaq iPaq with a big memory card. Even then your portable data starts going out of date until you resynchronise it.

The second obvious idea is to use the portable device as a terminal and just access the desktop data remotely. That's how Microsoft's Terminal Services program and Citrix work. The problems are that desktop programs were not designed to fit on a 2.5in screen, and you don't have access to your data unless you have a working communications link. Slow and variable or unreliable connections - such as standard GSM mobile phone networks - can easily drive you batty.

Sproqit uses the remote terminal idea, but with a difference. The mobile device runs a small (200K) "thin client" program, Sproqit Companion, which only has to collect application data and display it on the screen. But it does not have to cope with full-size Outlook screens, just the compressed binary data sent by a second program, the Sproqit Desktop Agent, which sits on your PC and drives Outlook. As a result, it provides access to all your data, including old email, but still works very quickly, even over a GSM phone line.

With Sproqit, you are always dealing with one master PST and, while you are connected, it is continuously updated. The drawback is that when you log off, you only have access to data that has been cached on the handheld device. If you read the first and last pages of Moby Dick, you have those, but not all the pages inbetween: they were never downloaded. Peter Mansour, Sproqit's founder and chief executive officer, says: "Anything you can do online you can do offline, except get new data."

Sproqit uses a familiar idea - it splits the user interface from the application - but is a new architecture for a new world. The old ways of doing things assumed you were almost never connected (synchronisation) or were connected most of the time (remote terminal). Sproqit assumes you can connect intermittently, but as often as you need. It's designed for a world of internet hotspots and mobile phones.

Sproqit is based near Microsoft in Seattle, where Mansour and some of his colleagues used to work on Windows CE and Pocket PC devices. What they are doing is stealing a march on Microsoft's CE.net client, which could end up doing the same sort of thing with XML messages. However, they can already support Pocket PCs, Palms and Symbian devices, with more to come. They should be able to put their Sproqit Companion "user interface platform" on mobiles faster than they get .Net clients, if they ever do.

They also plan to support Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes servers, and they have a software development kit, so programmers can write Desktop Agent plug-ins to Sproqitise other applications.

The launch is expected late this summer.