RIM legal woes jumpstart wireless e-mail alternatives

For millions of road warriors, RIM’s BlackBerry wireless e-mail service is an essential link to critical corporate data. But with that vital connection almost shut down at the end of 2005 by a lawsuit from NTP, a patent holding company, enterprise IT is beginning to consider alternatives.

Although the pace of the litigation appears to be slowing, with the recent dismissal by the U.S. Patent Office of four of the five patent infringement suits, advisory firms are issuing cautions regarding RIM deployments.

Late last week, Gartner issued an alert advising that companies “uncomfortable with risk” should cap “BlackBerry deployments and assess another system for expansion.” Gartner recommended that companies “comfortable with risk” should “continue with mission-critical BlackBerry deployments.”

In light of the continued uncertainty, the question on the lips of IT managers is whether competing mobile e-mail offerings can equal RIM’s BlackBerry, the most popular and widely deployed of the lot.

Until now RIM has enjoyed a lead of several years over other infrastructure providers by offering push capabilities that send e-mail to the device without user intervention. But, according to Ken Dulaney, senior mobile analyst at Gartner, that advantage is slipping.

“Once e-mail is relatively immediate, say within 15 minutes, and it is more or less a delivery activated system as opposed to a periodic check, RIM will no longer have a major advantage,” Dulaney said.

For example, Intellisync uses IP or packet-initiated push in which a packet is sent to the device to notify it that e-mail has arrived and then it synchronizes back.

Good Technology, as does RIM, maintains its own NOC (network operating center) allowing Good to know the addresses of all devices so that e-mail can be pushed in real time. Others, such as Microsoft, use an SMS-based text model in which the server sends a text message to the device that an e-mail has been received and then the device synchronizes.

Another, albeit short term, advantage for RIM comes from having what Dulaney calls a “complete offering.” Dulaney said Microsoft’s e-mail solution is “rudimentary on security,” Intellisync is “difficult to use” on the client side, and Good security “doesn’t protect other applications.”

This month, however, Good will introduce Good Mobile Defense, which will expand security to encrypt all applications, according to Rick Osterloh, vice president of products at Good. And, in late 2006 Microsoft’s next version of Pocket PC, code-named Crossbow, followed by Photon in 2007, will address client side deficiencies, including security, Dulaney said.

Nevertheless, RIM technology has withstood the test of time since 1999, with 4.2 million users of its BlackBerry service and relationships with 130 carriers worldwide, according to David Heit, senior product manager at RIM.

“We have an established solution with every carrier and every network. It is well-proven and reliable,” Heit said.

Several wireless e-mail competitors are quickly catching up to the venerable BlackBerry, and with Gartner predicting a 12-month to 18-month delay in a final resolution to the litigation pounding RIM, it appears that enterprise IT decision-makers will have time to wait and see.