Mobile email - Whats the fuss? Wireless e-mail has seen



phenomenal growth in the past two years, thanks to the proliferation of

Research in Motion's (RIM's) BlackBerry devices, initially in North

America and now in Europeand Asia/Pacific. Drivers for adoption by

organizations are the critical role of e-mail in supporting of immediate

access business process workflow, the mobility of employees who

increasingly spend time far from their office and PC,and the expectation

to corporate information.For better or worse, customers evaluating

wireless technologies are faced with a range of issues that are not

specific to individual solutions, technologies, tools or languages. Here's

a list of questions that you may want to discuss in order to be able to

develop the best solution for you particular needs:Investment

Protection:There are by no means standardized solutions out there, issues

include the different types of standards, what kind of vendor to go with

when it comes time to mobilize apps, the number of devices to support, and

so forth. The Mobility business is not in a mature stage, a lot of vendors

have great solutions, yet less likely to survive ??" so who to go with

?Intel facilitates this by joining standards consortiums, submitting

non-proprietary proposals, helping customers to make long-term decisions

with the bigger picture in mind.Simplicity/Usability:Security/PrivacyBased

on concerns of safety, privacy, regulatory or accessibility legislation,

standards are also drafted into law. That said, there are only so many

standards that can be supported.TCOVarious cost related decisions drive

ROI of the selected solutions:Handset support is another important

consideration. Most customers evaluating wireless solutions state that

they will support only a small number of handsets (between 1 and 10).

Overall, most customers are only looking to support between 1 and 5

versions of any particular handset.??? more:Any solution must allow the

ability to roam from docked to wireless and between wireless topologies

easily.The convergence of wireless voice and data is a requirement for

long term user and infrastructure productivity.Capabilities in wireless

will use a combined layer 2-4 security model to allow for secure access

and roaming.Roaming within campus networks should allow users to maintain

IP context.The IP address will become the user??Ts network context and

should be able to be transported from enterprise, to home, to the road,

and to hot spots.Standards-based solutions will be considered above

proprietary solutions .Ease of use and transparency are paramount in

developing solutions.Security controls to protect Intel intellectual

property must be able to function both in connected and disconnected mode,

supporting mobile application standards.Solutions must be inclusive of

secure access for non-Intel managed productivity enablers . "In the

mobility business the market segment share is won at the time of

technological transitions. Between technological transition it is very,

very difficult and very expensive to move market segment share by even a

point or two. At times of transitions, the early movers tend to drive the

technology transition and reposition themselves." -- Los Angeles Times 3rd

Annual Investment Strategies ConferenceAndrew S. Grove, Los Angeles,

Calif., USA, May 22,

1999http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/speeches/cn052499.htm"

Companies that wait too long to implement a mobile solution risk losing

customers, being less efficient and effective than their competition, and

limiting the flexibility they need to compete in the new market realities.

Companies must implement a mobile strategy now." By starting now with the

transformation of email into a service level based wireless framework,

customers actually define the foundation for a company-wide Enterprise

architecture that is cheaper to implement, easier to manage and maintain

and faster to change/innovate.The push email client solution allows the

implementation of the most important design principles of a service

oriented enterprise in a small-scale environment, but it mandates the same

ingredients.Achieving the SOE reality requires new levels of innovation to

orchestrate:???Software and data as services???Hardware as virtualized

resources???Autonomic data sources???Occasionally Connected Usage???And

Services that cross firewallsBy 2008, over four-fifths of mobile knowledge

workers will have access to wireless e-mail (0.6probability). (Gartner)By

2012, three-quarters of all knowledge workers will be evaluated in part on

how fast theyrespond to e-mails (0.6 probability). (Gartner)Productivity -

53 minutes per day regained through mobile email (RIM/IPSOS research)For

most organizations, e-mail has both put an end to the days of predictable

workflow andbecome a mission-critical application. The speed at which

staff respond to e-mails has a directimpact on an organizations' success,

now that on average, a tenth of the messages that arrive each day need

immediate action.Wireless access to e-mail, which is appearing in most

parts of the world, should help them cope.The chief audience for this

technology are those workers who are spending more and more time far from

their main places of work. Adoption of wireless e-mail is growing fast,

aided by the appeal of Research in Motion's BlackBerry handsets.Workers

with wireless access to e-mail can reduce their e-mail backlog by 80

percent or more, as they have more time to delete spam and prioritize

messages that need prompt attention. More importantly they can cut their

response times in half.Implications Wider availability of wireless e-mail

will raise expectations for "real time" responses.A person's speed of

response to e-mail is easily measured, many firms will include it among

staff evaluation criteria and whether it's appropriate or not.This will

force workers to greatly reduce, or even eliminate, their use of automated

"out of office" replies, and to respond promptly even outside normal

working hours and during holidays.Vacations will turn from periods where

they don't work into periods where they simply do less work than

usual.Consequently, the adverse effects of overwork will multiply:

illnesses, divorces and other kinds of disruption to family life will

sadly become all too common There will be more legal battles too, when

workers will claim to have suffered from their employer's policy toward

e-mail and especially as it's likely that many firms will break laws

passed to protect workers.Assuming spam is brought gradually under control

and that filters shield people from unwanted communications, vital

messages are likely to account for 40 percent of a knowledge worker's

daily e-mail burden by 2007.That's a welcome rise in one respect. But

missing a vital message will be more likely to harm your career. The

deployment of wireless technologies is further evidenced by the growing

proportion of the workforce that is expected to become mobile during the

next five years. Gartner Dataquest's definition of a mobile worker covers

employees working away from their desks for more than eight hours per week

on average.Interestingly, the trend in Australia and South Korea is not

that of a mass exodus of staff out of the office during the next five

years, but more of a steady increase in workforce mobility.Just over one

quarter of the Australian workforce will be mobile in five years' time (up

from 18 percent today) compared with South Korea, where one-third of staff

will be mobile in 2008, up from 15 percent today. We suspect the

differences between the two markets are attributable to a variety of

factors including geographical and cultural issues, network coverage and

workplace considerationssuch as management practices and staff oversight.I

hope the above helps - a number options and vendor platforms are

available. Please contact me to explain anything you are unsure on by

posting in the blog !!Thanks.