Microsoft Push E-Mail To Rival Blackberry
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Microsoft has announced partnerships with Vodafone and US mobile network Cingular, to delvier Blackberry-style push email solutions.

Targeting business customers in the first instance, the new Windows Mobile Direct Push E-mail solution was announced at the 3GSM World Congress in Spain.

Based around the Microsoft Windows Mobile version 5.0 operating system the Direct Push solution will initially kick off in France, Germany and the UK with Vodafone, though the solution is likely to be brought to Australia in good time.

The companies say the service will also be available to corporate and SMB customers in other countries during this year.

The system will allow emails and tasks to synchronise directly from Outlook, and Microsoft Office Excel Mobile and Word Mobile attachments can be viewed, edited and returned.

The service will integrate with Microsoft Exchange Server 2003.

The Mobile v1240 and Vodafone v1640 will support the service and local countries can offer alternative handsets based on local availability.

The system will have a major advantage over the RIM Blackberry service which is currently in danger of a US shutdown due to a patent lawsuit. Rather than routing all emails via the RIM servers in Canada for re-processing, the proposed Microsoft service will work directly from corporate exchange servers.

The potential for mobile email services is widely seen as in the early adopter phase with senior managers already hooked up with access, the market believes widespread adoption to all levels of the enterprise has already begun.

At the server end, the push email capabilities were built into Microsoft Exchange server at its last update in October 2005, so many corporate email systems will only need to be switched onto the new service.