As you may have heard, today Enterprise Mobile announced the availability of a Hosted Device Management solution for iPhone and other mobile platforms. It is powered by technology from MobileIron, a partner that we have been working with very closely for a while now. I am personally excited about this for several reasons:

• Hosted DM is faster to implement – no design reviews, no security committees for our customers to deal with.
• It can be scaled up and down very quickly – if you are hiring 1333 merchandisers for a holiday season, no problem – you only get charged for the 2 months they are employed.
• No ramp up for a company’s IT staff is required.
• Coupled with our other services, it enables a full mobile deployment instantly.

I could go on to say why this is sexy. I could call it cloud computing, SaaS, the ASP model, hosting, outsourcing or any of the other labels that trendy now. The descriptors aren’t as important as the capabilities that hosted device management provides. Of course, we all know that beyond the benefits I mentioned there are challenges with a hosted model that should be considered. User/authentication can be more complex as the identity of users either has to be replicated or re-created with the hosting provider, and some services may be limited in terms of integrating into an existing on-premise infrastructure.

However, I do believe that when you combine our services and capabilities you get more benefits than pitfalls with the hosted model. Of course, if you don’t share that view, you can take advantage of the installation and services on premise. That way you can enjoy looking at the silver appliance in your data center and Enterprise Mobile takes care of all the support, ongoing management, provisioning or even end user support for you. Give us a call…

I just came across an interesting marketing gimmick – www.bargaincell.com have extended some of their deals till January 15th 2010 !

However there is a catch – you have to place the orders on Thursdays and Fridays only in addition to using the THRFRIDAY coupon.

So in order to get the 15% off:

1) Go to www.bargaincell.com Thu or Fri ONLY

2) During checkout use THRFRIDAY coupon

3) Save 15% on your new Motorola Droid or iPhone or even Windows Mobile Accessories

Many Windows Mobile users are waiting eagerly for the release of updates to the 6.5 version. Unfortunately for most US based users it means waiting on their mobile operator (T-M for HTC Touch PRO2, Sprint for HTC Snap, etc.) to release the updates. It is not clear when and how are going to be released yet as mobile operators usually don’t share their plans and roadmaps. We, based in the US can just hope, call our account managers and keep the pressure on!

However if you live in Europe, where the (re) branding of your phone by mobile operator is much less prevalent you are lucky – there are 3 updates available right now. See the links below and let me know how you like the new, shine WM 6.5

HTC Touch Pro 2

HTC Snap

Toshiba TG01

As you probably already noticed Microsoft has made public their interim Windows Mobile 6.5 release. There is ton of reviews, I will leave it up to you to judge how it is received. But if you are looking for what is new, I found this very nice table of comparison:

http://www.mobiledeployments.com/windows-mobile-6-5-feature-compare-to-6-1-and-6-01/

Finally the promised updated is here…

Starting today, ATT customers using the Apple iPhone can install an update that will allow them to send pictures and other multimedia to others via MMS – sometimes called by the general population “Picture Messaging.

Users can choose from the following plans:

And to install the update on your iPhone, go here

Every time we have a larger gathering of people, being it at my house for a party, at a lake for some water skiing fun or at the mountains for hiking and back country skiing there is a guarantee that in the 10 or so phones there is going to be at last couple of iPhones. What can I say, all of my friends are super cool and ride the technology fashion wave.

During the process of trying to help businesses to adopt iPhones as tools I run into couple obstacles. Some are small like the calendaring functionality and some were bigger.

However today, one of the large obstacles for using iPhone primary device was removed – TomTom has announced availability of their turn by turn navigation in the Apple App Store. It features some interesting technologies such as the one called IQ Routes, said the company. Instead of suggesting the quickest route based on travel time, IQ Routes taps into the actual experiences of other TomTom drivers to determine the fastest route to take. TomTom said this technology lets people reach their destinations quicker up to 35 percent of the time.

I prefer TomTom, mainly because on Windows Mobile, where I have been using it for years now, it allows you to select driving, walking biking and other types of transport, it uses my phone thus I don’t have to pay the extra 9.95 when renting a car for a dedicated GPS unit, has a great database for points of interest and I really like their performance and functionality. But they are not alone in providing turn by turn navigation for iPhone here are couple other solutions:

TomTom for iPhone – 99$ for US and Canada maps – more details here

Navigon – 69$ for US and Canada maps Comparison with iGo My Way is here

iGo My Way – 79$ for US and Canada maps Comparison with Navigon is here

Now only time will show if my friends will stop buying and using the sometimes bulky and overpriced standalone GPS units for their cars or paying for the software update in their car. One of them shared that to update the built-in navigation in a Japanese high end sedan it close to 700 US$! But I know that anybody who has an iPhone now has a good, reliable and well working alternative for turn by turn navigation How about you? Will you use iPhone instead of other GPS devices? Please share your opinion in the comments below.

Cancelled Sendo WM device

I have started to work with smartphones sometime in 1998. I even have a mint prototype of what supposed to be the first Windows Mobile powered phone by Sendo – project that got canceled in 2002. Read more about it here.

Anyway fast forward to 2006 and any IT executive that was thinking about deploying mobile email / PIM and mobile applications basically had two basic option RIM/Blackberry and Windows Mobile. Each had its advantages and issues but once you had your requirements and made your decision, there was a good chance for you to run homogeneous platform. IT Helpdesk and Support, Training, Security and other departments became aware of the platform of choice and while international presence may posed a challenge with availability and the Symbian disruption (especially in Europe) the job was quite easy.

But something did happen in 2007 – the Apple released iPhone and stirred the pot. While the first generation was not suited at serious business use, the second one in 2008 added support for Microsoft Exchange and history started to repeat itself. IT managers were asked by their executives to figure out how to support iPhone, instead of their Blackberries. Regular employees started to bring their own devices and peer support helped them to get corporate email enabled. And the numbers grew.

Today with the introduction of Palm Pre into the mix, the bigger use of ruggedized devices that almost exclusively run Windows Mobile OS, over 30 new smatphone devices running Android planned for release before the end of the year and iPhone being on its 3^rd generation, the 2006 homogenous era looks like a something that will never happen again.

The reality is that most if not all IT departments and business owners have to consider supporting multiple platforms and consider the impacts and risks of all of them. There are some tools that serve multiple platforms well but most are just in their infancy. Also how to make a decision on which support and which just allow /enable but don’t provide any support?

Enterprise Mobile has been building mobile expertise since 2006. If you have any questions about what to do why don’t you send quick email or attend one of the great webinars