British mobile phone major Vodafone is introducing a business-oriented
"push" mobile e-mail service and plans to market it alongside similar
services from Blackberry and Microsoft, which it already sells.
The service, Vodafone Business Email, based on telecom software maker
Visto's push e-mail software, has a server functioning almost similar
to that of Blackberry's enterprise server. Microsoft's mobile e-mail
service is supported by Microsoft Exchange and mobile flavours of
Windows. It is expected to be in push-mode soon.
Vodafone Business Email and Blackberry Connect are priced at 28 pounds
per month for e-mail, calendar and contacts. The services are
delivered through a corporate server with a firewall.
The company also sells a pure e-mail version using an ISP POP e-mail
account, which comes at prices between 10 pounds and 15 pounds a
month. The Vodafone service will offer the corporate server free till
the end of next May.
It includes a new device management function, giving a remote view of
the state of the device to the administrator. It shuts down a lost
handset and manages roll-out and software installations.
Analysts find that the two services are on par except for the devices
they support. The Vodafone Business e-mail supports Microsoft and
Symbian smartphones, while the Blackberry service supports the
familiar Blackberry clients, and recently some non-Blackberry devices,
including the Nokia smartphones.
Vodafone said it will continue to push the Blackberry service. It said
the Blackberry service is intended for larger companies and those
established with Blackberry. The Vodafone service will extend that to
smaller companies and can be added to existing phones.
The Microsoft Windows Mobile service using scheduled ActiveSync is
designed for companies that use Exchange 2003 and Windows Mobile
smartphones.
Vodafone UK's director of enterprise marketing Mark Bond said working
with Visto, the company has developed a product to meet the both the
complex requirements of larger companies as well as the need of
smaller organisations and individuals to add easy to manage email to
their phone of choice.
www.viploan.co.uk
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