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.network and without having to install any software on the handset.
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.
About the Author:
Monika Mehra is a lecturer in English at G.C.W College, Punjab.
She is in the field of teaching and education for the past 7 years.
She is a patron of Mobile Email and has greatly benefited from it which
she would like to share with her readers.
Do log on to
www.emailatmobile.com
Contact her at:
monika@emailatmobile.com
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134
Date Published :
Jun 23 2008