Microsoft to Replace Blackberry?

nmccart writes "According to Wired Magazine, Microsoft, along with Cingluar and Vodaphone, is planning to introduce the next generation of Windows Mobile phones that can receive e-mails "pushed" directly from servers that handle a company's messaging. This will allow companies to skip over the cost of installing a Blackberry server, and instead just use the Exchange servers that they are already using. The question becomes, now that this technology is cheaper, will my VP be buying new Windows Mobile enabled cell phones for his entire department just so we can put in more hours?"

Comments

Re:I doubt it....

[binaryDigit]

So many places i know now are running blackberry and so many people i know have blackberry devices i think it will take a long time if it ever does occur for people to switch over to Windows SmartPhones.

I don't know that I entirely agree. While Crackberries are quite popular, I think that there is still a significant number of companies that don't have a mobile email solution that would jump at the opportunity to do it as a "single" solution. As well, as companies look to upgrade, having the all-in-one solution could be quite enticing. The biggest bonus for M$ is that I don't think they are necessarily counting on driving significant additional short term exchange licenses due to this manuver, so they can afford to wait and slowly take on marketshare. Remember, people wouldn't be buying "Windows Smartphones", they're buying mobile email solutions that also allow them to do voice. If a Windows Smartphone fits the bill, then so be it.

Not blackberry, goodlink

[Mantrid]

Blackberry works great for people with no servers etc. Our mobile solution has been Goodlink which makes the Treo a force to be reckoned with (if you get a working Treo that is, but that's another issue...), it can also run on some blackberries(I think) and WinCE.

Support for mobiles built in exchange? Bye-bye Goodlink at $300 a seat.

Re:Is there really much of a savings?

[Linker3000]

In our company we use Orange (UK) Smartphones set up to pull mail (POP3) from a Linux server running Postfix, MailScanner, ClamAV, Razor and SpamAssassin.

That's it.

The only contracted costs are the broadband link, phone rental and call charges.

No licences, no hosted servers, no ($$) Exchange server and no ($$) Blackberry Server.

Nuff said.

How It Works

[nathanh]

This is all based on second-hand information, so some of it might be wrong, but here's my understanding of how it works.

Getting mail to to a WinCE PDA has always been easy. The standard technique was POP or IMAP over whatever Internet connection you can finagle (eg, GPRS). However that was always a pull technique and the thing about crackberry addicts is they want the mail to appear on their PDA as soon as it arrives at the mail server (push). One technique is to send an SMS every time a mail arrives so the PDA knows to check the server, another technique is to poll the server frequently, but both of those techniques can be very expensive.

The new WinCE enabled PDA achieves push by opening an HTTP XML request back to your Outlook Web Access server. It sends the username and then just waits. If any mail arrives then the OWA sends back a "ping" message that tells the PDA to pull the new mail. When the HTTP request times out the PDA simply opens a new connection. Effectively this works the same as push - mail "appears" on the PDA as soon as the Exchange server gets it - but without excessive bandwidth costs or SMS costs. It also means you don't need special crackberry servers or a crackberry subscription.

So my guess is that this will be the downfall of crackberry, and not a moment too soon.

I saw a demo a couple of weeks ago.

[Asprin]

The good:
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1) If the real-life version works as well as the virtual PC demo I participated in, it will do exactly what the marketing materials say it does.
2) It not only synchs email, but todo, contacts, appointments, etc. Everything but public folders, I think.
3) On the server side, all of the software required to do push sync is free with Exchange Server 2003.

The bad:
------------------
1) Phone requires Windows Mobile 5.0, plus a sync driver/module thingy that (groan) HAS TO BE INSTALLED ON THE PHONE BY THE MOBILE VENDOR.
2) Support for this configuration is, well, going to suck because the mobile vendors will push you through their help desk (pretty much guaranteed to NOT understand this), and Microsoft can't support the mobile piece of the puzzle directly, even though it's technically their software.
3) The range of services over which mobile vendors will be able to exert their control has been expanded to include private corporate messaging, appointments and task lists! Yay!!!!