The workforce mobility is steadily increasing every year.
There are approximately more than Billion mobile workers in the world today. If IT applications do not go mobile along with
the employees, their productivity level and value decreases significantly. The
immediate need of these mobile professionals is for remote access to their
email in order to successfully transact business outside traditional work
places at all times.
As mobile ways of working become indispensable, it is
imperative for working professionals to move out of their organization to
realize the significant business benefits. Whether the top management or the
decision makers of an organization realize it or not, the majority of their
mobile workforce has an inherent requirement for wireless access to e-mail.
If wireless e-mail is such a priority for enterprises, then
the question arises
"What is preventing deployment?"
These days various wireless e-mail solutions and client
models are available in the market. The enterprises (large or SME's) are still
evaluating the right
configuration for their deployment. Most wireless e-mail
solutions fall into three categories like Desk
Top Client Solutions, Behind the Firewall Server Deployments and Carrier Hosted
Solutions.
.There are various factors which determine wireless email
deployment in an Organization, the foremost being Total Cost of ownership, Mobile Workforce of Organization, security
issues, support for wide array of devices and network compatibility.
Many organizations consider those email solutions for
deployment that are cost effective and require minimal expenditure. The Basic
Components of a wireless email total cost of ownership includes the software cost, service cost, device cost
and the support & maintenance cost.
In many cases the organizations are not ready to make such
huge investments in the IT department in terms of enterprise server, buying
& providing suitable high end devices to all its employees, paying monthly
subscription charges to mobile service providers and full time support and
maintenance from IT department to keep the entire set up running.
Secondly while talking about the mobile workforce, there are two types of mobile professionals in an
organization. On one hand we have the Top management or the senior most
executives and on the other hand we have the other set of employees like the
sales executives, site engineers, etc who need timely access to information
while they are on the move. Many times the company provides for a mobile email
solution for its high level employees only, by giving them laptops or high end
mobile phones like PDA's, Smart phones, etc. The decision makers realize the
fact that other set of employees also have an inherent need to remote access to
their emails in order to remain connected with their resources but again the
question of making such a huge investment stops them from deployment .
Small and medium enterprises that have a smaller number of
remote or mobile employees can avail on move services offered by mobile
carriers but then the monthly service charges applicable per person might not
be feasible for the company.
Then there are certain email clients/applications which work
only on limited Smart Phones & PDA's and are targeted at individuals, hence
are not worth so much investment.
Wireless email solutions are also available at monthly
subscription which is a cost effective option for enterprises or individuals as
compared to enterprise applications but security of data is the major
constraint as the server access remains with the third party putting a
constraint on the security of company's confidential information.
These days' different kinds of wireless email clients and
solutions are available so the Enterprises must evaluate the benefits
and potential drawbacks of each configuration and then select a vendor based
solution or client on the basis of its ability to deliver the chosen
service/solution.
Recently I came across a unique email solution called email@mobile
which can surely be a resourceful solution for large as well as SME's who can
not justify the deployment of expensive enterprise solutions. It is basically
meant for those organizations who would like to provide its employees with the facility
of accessing their corporate/official emails on the mobile but do not want to
invest in purchasing high end mobile phones, paying monthly subscription
charges or giving their server access to a third party.
email@mobile
software requires one time investment and installation of software on company's
mail server or web-space provided for the website. It allows the company users
to access their corporate (POP3 and IMAP4) email boxes anytime, anywhere using their
existing mobile phone, operational in any network and without having to install
any software on the handset.
For further details log on to www.emailatmobile.com/business/index.htm
Although issues such
as cost and security are some of the top barriers to wireless access to data,
several other issues are making enterprises hesitant to adopt wireless email solutions.
So I suggest that an enterprise should go in for such a mobile email deployment
that is
cost-effective,
secured, implemented with minimal development & integration, easy for IT department
to manage; provide support for a wide array of devices; and
work well on today's
limited-bandwidth wireless networks.
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