Through this agreement, T-Mobile will integrate Microsoft Office to mobile devices, allowing corporate clients to update appointments and emails while mobile.
The first of these solutions, the Mobile Access Portal, is targeted to large enterprises and provides mobile access to existing Microsoft Exchange servers within the client’s enterprise.
In contrast, the Mobile Service Portal targets small to mid-size organizations and provides a fully hosted service focusing mainly on Personal Information Management (PIM). T-Mobile’s mobile business solutions work on any GPRS enabled device such as a mobile phone, PDA or notebook computer.
Deutsche Telekom chief executive Ron Sommer said the alliance will give it an important head-start in marketing 3G.
These announcements come on the heels of T-Mobile’s agreement with Canadian firm Research in Motion’s European subsidiary to distribute its BlackBerry product as part of its mobile business solutions. T-Mobile is currently showing its BlackBerry solution, a voice enabled BlackBerry, with a WAP browser that provides all of the functionality of the original email centric device but with the added telecommunications benefit of a mobile telephone and WAP browser.
The main issue facing companies today is not whether to provide remote access to corporate applications but how this should be done, said Nikesh Arora, Executive Board Member, New Business, T-Mobile. Organizations are already prepared to pay a premium for mobility and provide remote access to corporate applications because they have to, continued Arora. Business users require access to their corporate data independent of time and location, but business communication has to be secure, highly reliable, and scalable in order to provide an efficient end-to-end solution to the business user. T-Mobile has all of these elements in place to aggressively go after this market.
