Sprint Plans To Sell Enterprise E-Mail Offering Direct

Sprint PCS

The company, at its Sprint PCS Vision network launch Thursday, discussed plans to offer enterprise customers the PCS Business Connection, e-mail and PIM application middleware that will be hosted by the carrier.

The service will allow business customers to access e-mail, contacts, company directories and schedules from Sprint's traditional cellular phones and smart phones without the need for integration or support work behind the firewall, said Jason Guesman, director of business marketing at Sprint PCS. While Sprint manages the network and middleware, corporate IT managers will be able to provision service and manage user rights in realtime, he said.

Sprint's strategy is to manage the wireless e-mail primarily as a direct business, said Guesman. "We're ramping up the service with our direct-sales force out of the gate and then we will eventually take it to our indirect partners," he said.

Instead of focusing on mobile e-mail solutions, the carrier's partners should be offering complex customized solutions to customers, Guesman said. With wireless e-mail, integrators come to a business, install the e-mail system and then walk away, while carriers focus on managing the network, he said. "Integrators don't have the same special magic to make it all work," Guesman said.

Solution providers expressed some concern over the movement of wireless e-mail toward a direct model. AT&T Wireless and Microsoft, two Redmond, Wash., firms, teamed up to provide a joint solution this month, and Research In Motion, Waterloo Ontario, has been pushing sales of its BlackBerry solution through carriers.

Dan Elliott, vice president of mobile solutions at CompuCom, Dallas, said carriers may be successful with an SMB e-mail solution that requires little support, but the enterprise is a tougher sale that requires the knowledge of a good integrator.

Still, Elliott acknowledged that wireless e-mail, which has been driving the mobile adoption, will eventually become commoditized.

Anticipating lowering margins on wireless e-mail, Retrieval Dynamics, a Sarasota, Fla.-based mobile solution provider, focuses on applications that solve other business problems.

"We're staying away from e-mail," said David Rippetoe, Retrieval Dynamics' director of business development. "It's driving wireless adoption, but it's kind of a commodity-type of thing now."