Managing Mobile E-mail Access
Today, customers can consider a huge range of mobile e-mail options. There are tons of e-mail-capable PDAs and smart phones available from a wide range of vendors, including Microsoft and Palm. A number of other options are available, too, from both device makers and wireless service providers.
Given the apparent availability of PDAs and smart phones purporting to handle mobile e-mail, you'd think my road warrior clients would be in hog heaven, right? Nope! In the mobile e-mail world, promise and reality are two very different things. So are product and reality.
Specifically, there are four main issues:
Synchronization: Most PDAs and smart phones depend on e-mail protocols that either cannot synchronize client and server mailboxes (POP3) or require high-bandwidth networks to achieve good synchronization (IMAP4). When server mailboxes aren't synchronized with client mailboxes, the user must waste time deleting mail or re-reading messages they read earlier on another client. Also, when IMAP4 doesn't have the bandwidth it requires, the user must wait long seconds, even minutes, for updates.
Availability: Those devices that do not depend on either POP3 and IMAP4 are difficult, sometimes impossible, to find on the open market today. Examples of such products include Microsoft's new Windows Mobile PDA and phone devices, which use Outlook PDA-to-Exchange Server synchronization and Web browser e-mail access.
Speed: E-mail messages move slowly to and from most of these devices, due to non-ubiquitous wireless WAN bandwidth. Wireless carriers are working hard to implement higher bandwidth protocols in the 128 Kbps and over range. Still, in the real world, it isn't unusual to see bandwidth of 9.6 Kbps or lower. Also, as more and more users attempt to access wireless networks, either bandwidth drops or some users are temporarily denied access. Finally, the lack of comprehensive wireless data coverage in even large cities means your customers may experience delays or even signal loss when moving around.
Cost: Wireless WAN bandwidth is generally quite expensive. Charges of $40 per month and higher per device are not unusual, and this covers data only. The wireless phone rates are separate.
Attractive Alternatives
Fast, reliable, synchronized and reasonably priced wireless WAN access to corporate e-mail is still not easy Given these issue, what to use? Here are two devices I like: Research In Motion's sophisticated Blackberry line of client-server products, and Danger Inc.'s SideKick device. The latter, though designed primarily for the teenage crowd, is quite adaptable to some corporate environments.
Which is better? It depends mainly on the customer's budget.
The Blackberry client-server system uses an Exchange Server-based component to synch messages between an Exchange server and the pocket-sized Blackberry devices used by staff for mobile e-mail access. Blackberry takes an interesting approach to limited bandwidth problems: By default, only part of a message -- 800 bytes -- is sent to the PDA. (This minimum can be changed by the user, however.)
Blackberry is best for companies that need to provide mobility for a relatively large number of users. It's certainly not inexpensive. Blackberry's Enterprise Server Software for Microsoft Exchange, which includes 20 user licenses, costs nearly $5,000. Wireless data access costs another $46 a month per device. And the Blackberry PDAs themselves range in price from $250 to $650, depending on screen size and color capability. Also, Blackberry installation and maintenance requires some expertise at the server level, which I'd estimate at about $2,500 a year.
For customers that enjoy smaller budgets, lack extensive IS support staff, or need to support only a few users, I recommend a cobbled-together solution using the SideKick running on T-Mobile's wireless network. I couple this with Pumatech's Intellisync goAnywhere workstation-based product, the importance of which I'll describe below. Almost by magic, my clients have Web-based access to their Exchange server e-mail and other folders, including calendars, contacts and tasks.
My clients and I have been using this solution for the last six months. Performance is quite good on T-Mobile's wireless network, helped along by the fact that only small screens of data are moved at a time. The costs are reasonable. The SideKick device costs about $250. An annual license for goAnywhere, which includes use of the Pumatech intermediary Web site, costs just under $100. You can buy unlimited, wireless data-only services for the SideKick for about $30 a month, with a 20-cent-per-minute charge for phone calls. You can also purchase any T-Mobile wireless phone plan for the SideKick.
Another Side of SideKick
Here's how the SideKick-T-Mobile-goAnywhere solution works.
First, install goAnywhere on a desktop computer. The goAnywhere software interacts with Microsoft's Outlook on the same desktop computer. Over the Internet, goAnywhere provides a Web page view of your Outlook mailbox and its contents to your SideKick device. In other words, whatever you do on the SideKick is actually happening in Outlook. Conversely, whatever you do in Outlook is reflected in the updated Web pages on the SideKick. For example, if you delete three e-mail items from your Inbox on the SideKick, the three items are actually deleted in Outlook. Then the SideKick Web page is refreshed showing your Outlook mailbox with the three items deleted.
What's more, if your Outlook mailbox is connected to an Exchange server, then the contents of your mailbox on the server will synchronized with your Outlook mailbox.
Also, SideKick, in combination with T-Mobile's wireless service, includes a number of other capabilities: wireless phone, wireless Internet browser, wireless POP3 e-mail to any POP3 server available on the Internet, as well as calendar, address book, to-do list, and notepad functions. SideKick supports any Internet-available POP3 server, including Exchange servers. This means you can link a SideKick to a corporate e-mail service, though you'll have to live with all of the weaknesses of POP3.
Another nice feature: T-Mobile provides a custom Web site for each SideKick user. This Web site provides a large-screen view of the various SideKick functions, including POP3 e-mail. Anything the user does on the SideKick Web site is synchronized wirelessly with the SideKick device, and vice versa. But, in keeping with the POP3 protocol, whatever the user does to POP3 mail on the Web site or on the SideKick is not synchronized with their Outlook/Exchange mailbox.
All this capability comes on a device that, when opened, measures just 4.5 inches long and 5 inches wide. When not in use, the screen can be rotated to cover the keyboard, reducing the device's length by an inch.
Pumatech, the maker of goAnywhere, provides each goAnywhere user with a customized Web page that acts as the intermediary between goAnywhere running on the user's desktop and the SideKick or any PDA/smart phone with a Web browser. This site serves up a Web browser view of the user's Outlook/Exchange mailbox, including any function in that mailbox from the user's Inbox to your calendar to any folders they create in the mailbox. The user can log directly into this site with a standard large screen Web browser and work on their mailbox. Or the user can connect using a small-screen device with a Web browser and perform the same tasks. The user must buy a subscription to use the Pumatech Web site.
Installing goAnywhere
1. Assure that your desktop computer has a continuous connection to the Internet. Dial-up won't work.
2. Assure that an Outlook MAPI client (not Outlook Express) is installed on the desktop computer where you plan to install goAnywhere.
3. Purchase a subscription to goAnywhere from Pumatech.
4. Install goAnwyhere on your desktop computer.
Using goAnywhere
1. To access your Outlook/Exchange mailbox and its many functions, open the SideKick web browser and point it to the URL for Pumatech's intermediary web site. The browser logs into the web site and requests a current view of your Outlook/Exchange mailbox from goAnywhere running on your desktop. This view is presented through the SideKick's Web browser screen. The photo below shows the SideKick accessing an Outlook/Exchange mailbox using the T-Mobile wireless network and Pumatech's Intellisync goAnywere.
2. To read a message on the SideKick, first highlight it using the thumb-wheel on the device's right side, then press the wheel down. Essentially, you've highlighted the URL for the message. The message is then quickly retrieved and displayed.
3. There is a URL for anything you might want to do, including replying to and deleting messages, or accessing other Outlook/Exchange functions such as your calendar. Messages even include live URLs that might have been included in the original message.
Remember, keep your eye on the wireless WAN market. Many of the problems I report here will get resolved over the next year or two, making all of the industry's fancy PDA and smartphone solutions quite viable. Until then, Blackberry and SideKick are you best options.
BARRY GERBER is an IT consultant, author, and professional photographer. He is the author of a recent book, Mastering Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 (Sybex, 2003).