Personal Edition is a desktop-redirect product rather than server-based technology which the Redwood City, California-based company offers in its Server Edition.
In the Server Edition, a Seven Enterprise Server sits alongside a company’s email infrastructure and pushes email out to mobile devices via a carrier-operated data center. But with a desktop redirector, a client is downloaded to an individual PC, which must then be left on in order for mail sent to its users to be forwarded to their mobile devices. The disadvantage here is that it only serves one person, and requires their machine to be on all the time.
To address these limitations, Seven is planning a version of Personal that will enable one PC in a workgroup to receive and forward emails for up to 20 associated users, said Thexton. The typical scenario is mine, where I’m always on the move and my desktop machine’s frequently turned off, whereas my PA is always in the office and so her machine could be used to serve me my email, he said.
The workgroup variant to Personal is not managed centrally by a company’s IT department, but it admits a relatively simple migration to the Server Edition. It is aimed at small companies or workgroups within an organization that cannot wait for central IT to deploy company-wide push email.
Seven’s go-to-market strategy is still entirely carrier-centric, and Personal Edition is already offered by telcos including Sprint PCS which bundles it into its basic data plan. Companies can then upgrade to Enterprise Edition in which the server pushing out the emails is hosted by Sprint.
