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 â?" 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.â?¦ 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 userâ?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:â?¢Software and data as servicesâ?¢Hardware as virtualized
resourcesâ?¢Autonomic data sourcesâ?¢Occasionally Connected Usageâ?¢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.
Steve Rastall - MD igroup. Steve has many years mobile
experience, visit www.igroupltd.co.uk for more information.
