The consulting and research company, Informa Telecoms and Media have published a new report on the Mobile Enterprise. In the report they identify the 'Prosumer', an employee who's company pays for a portion of their monthly phone bill and who has been excluded from accessing corporate email wirelessly due to technical barriers including device configuration/capabilities.
Informa believe that this large segment of users do have a need to access corporate email through their mobile device and that manufacturers like Blackberry will move increasingly towards back-end server solutions, and away from their current focus on the mobile device.
We think that this is right, blackberry type solutions are great at what they do but the requirement for a new handset excludes a very large number of companies who would like to roll out mobile access but cannot justify an investment in new handsets for employees who have traditionally used their subsidised personal mobile phones for company use.
This rise in demand for efficient corporate email access via already existing devices (perhaps with new email clients) coincides nicely with the work that Isode and other companies have been doing to implement the IETF's LEMONADE standards. These new Open Standards bring efficient mobile email access to existing handsets though a combination of LEMONADE Compatible clients on phones and LEMONADE compatible IMAP mail servers such as Isode's M-Box (or even IMAP access to POP only accounts via a product like Isode's M-Box POP/IMAP gateway).
