Nokia Intellisync April 3, 2008
Posted by Burhan in : Mobile, Nokia , trackbackI’m sure everyone has heard of Blackberry aka “Crackberry”, the device and the company (Research In Motion - RIM) that created an army of lawyers and execs thumbing away emails, notes, and other text on the tiny devices.
The Blackberry service is more than instant email; its also about security and device management. IT managers can remote wipe devices, help customers remotely, and even provision devices over the air (OTA).
Nokia’s answer to corporate email push is the intellisync platform, which like Blackberry provides device management, instant email, and a few other perks. Almost everyone has experienced the Blackberry phenomenon. I, however, wanted to see what the other side was like so I have now been using Nokia Intellisync and would like to share my experiences with you.
How Does It Work?
Lets first get the basics out of the way. How does all this work? The basic premise behind all the push technology is the same, and follows these generic steps — starting with the email being sent from a user to your email address:
1. Email arrives at your email server. This can be any email server that you like, however most push email services are designed to work with either Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Domino — two of the largest corporate email servers in the market. So the email arrives at a server. Once it is there, you can check it from your laptop, your desktop or if provided in your organization from a special website running an email application (commonly called “webmail”).
2. The push email service is running on another computer that is in direct communication with your email server. As email reaches your main email server, the push email service takes the new email, compresses it and sends it encrypted via the Internet or the cellular network to your device — this is “push” in push email.
3. Your device which is on an ‘always on’ connection receives the message; you are interrupted with a beep and a flashing light or other indicator; and if you happen to people that love to customize their ringtones, your message has also annoyed the 4 or 5 people around you at that time.
So there you have it, its not that complicated now is it?
Common Misconceptions
As with most tech — as soon as it reaches any kind of popularity, misconceptions start floating around, mostly from eager sales people trying to land a deal — ahem, I’m talk about you Zain. Two of the most common are:
You Must Have Exchange
This is a very common misconception. Sales people tell upper management that in order to take advantage of the new fangled technology, they must have an Exchange server in house, pay for another server to host the push technology component, pay them to install it (400 KD last install charge from Zain) and only THEN will they be able to use it. This is utterly false. There are a lot of companies that will have you set up with push email at a minimum of cost to you. You don’t even need an IT department.
You must buy your device from the carrier
Again, another one of those sales tactics used. You can buy the device from outside (make sure its unlocked) and use it in Kuwait without issue — almost always at a steep discount. In most cases, you can use your current mobile (especially if its a business device — like the Nokia E-series and the Sony P-series) with free software to get push email going.
So what do you need to take advantage of push email at your organization? Very simply — all you need is a domain name, a device that supports the technology that you are thinking of going with and a data subscription with your provider. That’s it! No IT department, no email server, no pushy salesmen and you don’t even need a website. Your domain is enough for you to sign up with the many hosted service providers and take advantage of email any/everywhere.
Players In The Field
I already spoke about Blackberry, and will be speaking about Intellisync but there are other solutions also that compete for the corporate push email market. Some of the major players in this space are:
Available in Kuwait: Yes - Wataniya (”W-Mail”) and Zain (”Email Anywhere Plus”)
Good messaging (now a division of Motorola) is a service that is available on a large variety of devices because its client is written in a device independent technology. It provides similar features as Blackberry (synchronization, push email, PIM) and works on the same principle as described above.
Available in Kuwait: Yes - Zain
This is perhaps the easiest solution to get going for companies that have an in-house Exchange server and the necessary staff to administer it. Microsoft introduced the service with Exchance 2003 and has been enhancing it ever since. You don’t need a Windows Mobile device to take advantage of this tech, most other devices have clients that can access the service. In fact, you don’t even need a carrier involved in most situations to take advantage of the service.
Nokia Intellisync
Nokia’s entry into the push email and device management market is called intellisync wireless email; which is part of the Nokia Intellisync Mobile Suite of technologies. Just like Blackberry, Good and ActiveSync, Intellisync works on the same principles described above. There is a intellisync server which is in sync (pun) with your mail server and it pushes email out to your compatible device.
It goes without saying that the Intellisync service works best with Nokia’s business series devices (the E-series); however because Nokia’s handsets are based on the excellent Symbian operating system, Intellisync clients are available for most Symbian devices and some non-symbian ones as well. There is a detailed listing at the Nokia website that you can peruse later (click on the specifications tab).
Surprisingly, there aren’t that many companies that provide hosted intellisync services. I was only able to find one, despite a two day Google effort. In Kuwait, FCC uses intellisync internally and as far as I know, they also provide the service to companies as a complete solution — but not as a hosted services for those organizations without in house IT departments and mail servers.
Here is something you might not know, but it is common practice across hosted email providers that I have used. Most, if not all — use Exchange as their email server, with the appropriate “push” server attached to it, be it the Blackberry Enterprise Server, the Good messaging server, etc. What does that mean? That means in most cases that when you sign up with these providers — they will give you, as part of your subscription with them access to licensed versions of Outlook and Entourage for each account which you can use in your organization. Software piracy is rampant in the Middle East and this is a good way to get started on the right track of using licensed software — and more importantly, access to security and software updates. They are able to do this because Microsoft provides licenses to Exchange ASPs — in fact, if your organization has Exchange (ahem, licensed Exchange) you also have licensed version of Outlook and Entourage for your users.
I signed up with Cortado to evaluate the service. They provide a 30 day money back guarantee, and the cost of the service is very reasonable. It takes about a day to setup everything, and after that, I was off to set it up on my Nokia E61.
The first step is to download and install the Intellisync client on your device. This is a three step process; you browse to a website, enter your email address and password, click on your device model number and download the software and install it. You should always install it on your phone memory and not your memory card. Most software will default to installing it on your phone memory so you might not get this prompt at all.
Once the software is installed, it might restart your mobile device. Once it is all said and done, you will find the application in your application or installations folder on your device.
Click the icon to launch the application, and you will be presented with a login screen. Provide the credentials given to you by your provider, and soon you’ll be at the home screen of the application
A few notes on the main screen - the first thing I need to point out is the very top right of the screen, where you see the green circle. Green solid circle means that the system is working in online mode; the other states are
From Left to Right: Syncing Disabled Due to Battery Threshold (more info. below), Offline, Online, Syncing (animated)
Note in the bottom right corner is ‘Hide’. When this select key is pressed, the application is pushed to the background. Keen readers will note that before the recent FP update to S60, the ‘end’ key sent applications to the background. To see a list of running apps, you hold down the menu (or ‘home’ key). The new FP update changed this behavior for apps, and the end key does indeed close apps. I will test the app on a FP1 E-series device and confirm the behavior; but to be absolutely sure that the app continues to run (and checks for messages) hit the ‘hide’ key when you want to send the app to the background.
A run through of the icons, from the top row:
Inbox - This shows your unread email count and is the primary icon to get to your emails.
Compose - Hmm — care to guess what this is for? 
Folders - Allows you to view other email folders on your email server.
Calendar - Keep track of birthdays and schedule blog writing time. The calendar folder is linked to the calendar on the device itself; and all your entries are syncd with the main email server. So if your secretary send you a meeting request, you can accept it from the device, and it will show up both on your device and in your Outlook client on your desktop.
Contacts - Again, this is linked with the standard contacts application on the device. Any contact you add is automatically syncronized with the server; so you always have a backup of your contacts.
Sync - Normally you don’t need to use this icon, as it forces a sync of the device, you set up synchronization and other things in the…
Settings - Settings function. As you can see, this is very straightforward. You only need to really adjust the top two options; and the security settings; which allow you to create a pin code and automatically lock the application itself. There is a great feature that disables sync if your battery is below a threshold. The following series of screenshots show the various options in settings:
Notes - This is again, linked to the Notes application on your device. Notes written on the device are synchronized with the server, and hence with the desktop application that you are using. You may choose to disable what is synchronized in the settings screens (see above); but I would recommend leaving everything on.
Tasks - This is linked to the ‘To-do’ list on the phone.
Travel Info - This is a unique application that comes with intellisync that I have not seen in other push services. This application scans your emails for any flight information (airline reservations, hotel information, etc.) and collects it in one easy to manage page for you to see. The application is linked to an online service and displays all information. I have not had a chance to see it myself, so the last screen is from Nokia’s own documentation (yes, I realize its from a Windows device — the application suite supports non Symbian devices.) Definately a useful app for the traveling exec or sales staff.
The last two icons, Information and Help are both shortcuts to web pages with more information on the software package, as seen below.
In addition to all of the above, the intellisync software adds an extra standby plugin that shows emails recieved via intellisync. It is in addition to the standard standby plugin that can display either your SMS inbox, or one of your IMAP/POP3 accounts that you can setup using the built-in email clients on the E-series. A note that this plugin is unique to the E-series devices as is not included in other Nokia devices.
Nokia has added other features to the intellisync platform, divided into the following areas:
Nokia Intellisync Wireless Email - What I detailed above.
Nokia Intellisync Device Management - This component allows for remote management of devices. Examples of tasks that can be done remotely include setting/modifying access points; pushing applications to devices, performing silent installs of apps and general application management; inventory of devices, remote locking and remote device wipe; installing, activating and deleting themes (this could be fun — imagine your phone reboots with some other theme) and a whole host of other administrative tasks.
Nokia Intellisync File Sync - As it sounds, this allows files to be pushed to devices remotely. Example usage would be a secretary creates a sales spreadsheet and then it is automatically sent to all sales staff devices; then when he/she updates the file, it is automatically synchronized.
Nokia Intellisync Application Sync - This is the feature that really has got me excited. Essentially, this allows you to write applications that can be synchronized and pushed across devices. A quick example would be sales force integration. Imagine a stock application that is running as part of a enterprise wide ERP stack; and a mobile version is created and pushed to devices. The mobile app can then provide similar functionality as the desktop application on mobile devices; almost as if turning the phone into a mini thin-client for the application. Really neat stuff.
Conclusion
Nokia’s approach to email push is a bit unique in that they have not tied their solution to their devices. The way that all these components are developed ensures that they can be installed and run on non-Nokia devices. This is great on the part of Nokia, really the only full-fledged stack from a major player in the mobile market that is as much device independent as one can make it (hey, it even runs on Treo and Windows Mobile devices!)
However, it is not without issues. The fact that the application essentially creates duplicate shortcuts to applications that are built-in to the host device is a bit redundant. I feel that they could (at least for Nokia devices) have more transparent integration. Example would be the Blackberry Connect software, which is completely integrated into the phone’s native UI. You don’t find a ‘blackberry application’ that is used; emails are delivered in the same place where all your other messages are, and it just makes the entire experience more transparent to the end user.
The great thing of the Nokia approach is that the way it is designed, makes it very open and allows the enterprise to utilize the technology across a wide variety of host devices and application domains, allowing for unique apps (like the travel application) that really add value for the enterprise.
Comments, as always — are welcome.
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