Cingular launches corporate e-mail service

As carriers look for additional bait to lure corporate users onto their high-speed data networks, two infrastructure providers Seven and Xpherix announced this week technology to keep data safe and secure behind the firewall.  

Seven unveiled Xpress Mail Enterprise and Express Mail Network editions for the Cingular network, a service previously available only on the Sprint network.

The Network edition brings the carrier to the customer by opening a secure port into the enterprise while the Enterprise edition works in reverse, allowing the corporate customer to go out to the carrier network.

Dedicated wireless e-mail server software plugs into the corporate e-mail server. In most cases the plug-in would talk to Exchange Server, for example, and detect when new e-mails come in. The software then pings the Seven software sitting on the carriers network. The carrier then pushes e-mails as they come in to the appropriate device. 

Seven’s version of push technology does not require constant polling of the network for e-mails, which typically increases network traffic and possibly air time charges while decreasing battery life on the handset.

Seven software is currently deployed on Sprint and Cingular networks and is available for Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Domino, Novell Groupwise, IMAP and POP e-mail, personal contacts, and global directories.

Seven also works with Palm, Pocket PC, Microsoft, or Symbian operating systems.

Cingular Enterprise Edition is priced at air time $29.99 per user, per month with 5MB of data usage, or $39.99 per user, per month with unlimited data usage. There is also a $1,500 one-time setup fee for the enterprise edition.

According to Stephen Drake, manager of mobile infrastructure software at IDC, corporate e-mail will give carriers a foot in the enterprise door.

“Today there is a big play to get a mass market for e-mail, but IT can expect a big play from the carriers for business-based applications next,” Drake said.

In related news, Xpherix also launched an e-mail, contact, and calendaring solution called Remo nationally with Verizon, as well as with regional carriers Cellular One, Cellular South, and NTELOS and a data backup service for cell phone users. 

While the Xpherix solution hosts contact and calendaring in its datacenter, it also gives its business customers the ability to keep e-mail behind the firewall.

“Contact and calendaring are not considered mission-critical, but e-mail is so we provide a connection from the cell phone directly to the e-mail server,” said Nick Walker, president and CEO at Xpherix.

When deployed next month, Xpherix’s backup and restore service will allow users to back up calendar and contact data onto the Xpherix server. The service is targeted at users changing cell phones or at users who might lose their handset.

After the initial backup, the handset will be automatically be backed up every 24 hours.

Cost of the service is either 99 cents per backup or $4 per month, said Walker.