TechEd Europe: Microsoft unveils wireless strategy
- Posted:
- 17:01 06 Jul 2001
- Topics:
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Microsoft Mobile Information Server Enterprise Edition is a new server designed to allow users to co-ordinate the reception of e-mail while away from the office. MMIS enables the user to redirect e-mail alerts to their mobile device. Using the rules inside Microsoft Exchange, users can decide what e-mail should be transferred to their mobile inbox. According to Microsoft, the product can be deployed by a corporate IT department without additional components from a mobile carrier, although the user will lose the ability to encrypt their e-mail.
Wireless e-mail service
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In a bid to provide tighter support for pull and push mechanisms of content delivery and provide a secure, encrypted channel, Microsoft has also launched MMIS Carrier Edition.
Vodafone and Telefonica have both signed up as partners. Vodafone will begin providing services from the end of July 2001 and Telefonica are to launch services during Q3/01. At present, neither company has announced how it intends to price the service but Telefonica has suggested that there would be a fixed monthly access fee coupled with a download charge.
Microsoft's intention is to compete with all of the other e-mail forwarding systems across any mobile infrastructure. This means that unlike wireless e-mail provider Blackberry, which has limited itself to using GPRS, Microsoft will also be supporting WAP phones.
Developing wireless services
Another facet of the strategy is Mobile Information Toolkit, a product designed to allow developers to build Web services that can use MMIS as a server. MIT will be released with VisualStudio.NET although it is just a plug-in component and will be maintained by its own product team. The importance of MIT is that Microsoft will be providing support for a number of devices to allow you to validate your WML code so that it is correctly formatted for the target device.
To support MIT and the device targeting component there is also a desktop Microsoft Mobile Explorer (MME) that will act as an emulator. For developers this provides a chance to test against devices that they may not have in-house but would want to support.
Moving forward, Microsoft is less clear about how it will include additional device support, the level of support that will be added and how it will charge for it.
There are already a small number of companies such as Argogroup, which provide device-targeting components.
The MME also edges Microsoft closer to being able to provide browser support across a wide range of mobile devices. The PocketPC phones from vendors like Trium, Sendo and Sagem are already beginning to appear in quantity on the market and Sony will be launching its device in Europe shortly.
