Speaking as an ex-WordPerfect, Lotus 1-2-3 user who now uses Microsoft Word and Excel, I’m wondering if the same thing is about to happen in the mobile world.However, this time the migration will happen at the middleware layer, not at the end-user level. The question is will Microsoft supplant all or most of the middleware messaging vendors, i.e., Extended Systems, Good, Intellisync, JP Mobile, Openwave, RIM, Visto, to name a few. I ask for this reason: this month is the one year anniversary of Exchange Server 2003. Built into Exchange Server is Mobile Information Server [MIS], formerly known as Exchange ActiveSync. While many companies haven’t upgraded to Exchange 2003 yet, my guess is they soon will. Microsoft announced it is dropping support for Exchange 5.5 this year and support for Exchange 2000 next year. [Extended support for Exchange 2000 will continue but not mainstream support.]Therefore, I expect companies will migrate to Exchange 2003. If they do, they get Mobile Information Server for nothing. Two weeks ago PalmOne, you remember them, arch rival to the Microsoft and Pocket PC devices, announced it will be putting the Microsoft client component to MIS into the Treo 650 and into future wireless models as well.What do the gurus of the industry say about the future of middleware messaging vendor rivals to Microsoft? It depends on who you ask.David Hayden, president and CEO of MobileWeek says this changes the face of the mobile email space especially from an ROI perspective. Exchange 2003 with mobile device support is going to have a much lower ROI than RIM or Good Technology solutions. Initially, those solutions will have a competitive advantage from a standpoint of feature set and security, but as Microsoft has proven time and time again, iteration after iteration, they finally get it right. Hayden says this is not going to be an overnight change especially for those companies that have already deployed a solution like the RIM Blackberry Information Server. However, for companies looking to equip thousands of workers with mobile email you can’t deny the significant cost differential between a free solution coming from the engineers who created Exchange versus a third party solution. Ken Dulaney, vice president of mobile technology at Gartner sees it differently. Dulaney says Microsoft basically offers manual push email. It is either a timed synchronization solution or you ping the server with SMS, an unreliable mechanism, at least as far as working in real time goes. Secondly, Microsoft must deal with each device vendor separately while companies like most of the ones named above have cross platform solutions out of the box.In addition, Microsoft doesn’t have a NOC, network operations center, which most of the other vendors have to provide linkages to many of the carriers. What do I think? Well, for the immediate future everything that Dulaney says may be true, but looking further down the road, perhaps as long as five years or more, I think Hayden has it right. Technology Industry