Synchronica today announced that Mobile Gateway 3.0 supports over-the-air synchronization between Microsoft Exchange and the newly launched Apple iPhone. This will allow mobile operators and service providers to offer mobile synchronization to business users and prosumers, enabling them to receive corporate email on their iPhones without having to ask their IT manager to open the firewall or install additional software.
Mobile Gateway seamlessly integrates with the corporate IT infrastructure and does not require the enterprise to expose IMAP and SMTP in their Exchange servers or install additional connectors – issues that often raise security concerns with IT administrators.
Instead, Mobile Gateway uses Microsoft’s secure Outlook Web Access (OWA) to retrieve email from the corporate Exchange server, a service enabled by many enterprises to provide users with access to corporate email from home or while traveling. Mobile Gateway 3.0 delivers emails directly to the built-in email client of the Apple iPhone. Users will be able to benefit from the outstanding user experience of the built-in email client of the iPhone and its tight integration with the phone’s address book.
Synchronica in a statement said the company believes that Apple’s iPhone will add momentum to the prosumer and consumer mobile email phenomenon, which industry analyst Visiongain predicts will grow exponentially to reach 36 million consumer mobile email accounts by 2008, with this figure predicted to rise to 184 million by 2012.
Commenting on the decision to support Microsoft Exchange synchronization with the Apple iPhone, Carsten Brinkschulte, CEO of Synchronica said in the press release, “The iPhone is a very attractive smartphone, appealing to both the consumer and prosumer market. However, IT Managers are not going to permit their executives to synchronize a device that requires them to punch holes in the corporate firewall. Mobile Gateway already supports synchronization with Microsoft Exchange, but does not require firewall modification or any software to be installed in the corporate network, so this won’t be an issue. From a carrier’s perspective, we are significantly expanding the reach of the iPhone into the business user and prosumer segments.”
Synchronica was one of the first synchronization software vendors to combine both SyncML (OMA DS), which is optimized for synchronization of calendar and contacts, and Push IMAP (LEMONADE), which is optimized for mobile email. Millions of mobile phones support email over IMAP, but IMAP does not support calendar or contact synchronization. Thus, combining Push IMAP for mobile email with SyncML (OMA DS) for synchronization of calendar and contacts allows Synchronica to support the widest range of devices and the most popular content types.
Synchronica’s Mobile Gateway provides carrier-grade push email and synchronization services for both consumers and business users. For consumers, it includes back-end support for POP3 and IMAP, connecting to popular mail services such as AOL or Yahoo. For business users, it provides a unique zero footprint architecture where users simply register their devices with Mobile Gateway and instantly start to receive push email on their devices – no connectors behind the firewall are required. Mobile Gateway includes built-in support for Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes, and Sun JES, thereby reaching the majority of business user mail systems.
More information is available at http://www.synchronica.com/
Hey Camel,
It’s getting really old. Wasn’t very funny the first 300 times; even less so now.
@ eMax,
This thing uses Microsoft’s Outlook Web Access (OWA), which is almost certainly enabled on your corporate network. In other words, there is NOTHING they would have to change. It would just be like a user at home accessing email via the web exchange component.
@ Cubert,
Microsoft says OWA is secure. Since IT Managers march to Microsoft’s tune that’s all they need to know about its security.
To be clear: this is an email-only solution, no calendar, no contacts. You could get the same by just enabling IMAP on the Exchange server. I don’t quite get what value this product adds.
http://www.synchronica.com/news/070711-synchronica-syncs-apple-iphone-to-microsoft-exchange.shtml