Vodafone teams with IBM

Pro

1 April 2005

Vodafone’s Irish customers will be able to view their enterprise e-mail and calendar systems from a mobile phone or handheld device as part of a service to be launched this Autumn.

The service will be made available over the GSM and GPRS bands and is aimed at a wide range of businesses, from small or medium sized organisations to enterprise customers. It will be launched as ‘Vodafone e-mailAnywhere’ under the ‘WorkAnywhere’ portfolio later this year.

The service is compatible with Lotus Domino and Microsoft Exchange Server. Customers will not have to install additional hardware. Smartner supplied a mobile office system that comes with a fully secure wireless connection. The software is run on IBM’s WebSphere Everyplace platform and it includes mobile e-mail, calendar, tasks, contacts and group messaging with multi-device access.

Vodafone has selected IBM, in conjunction with the mobile software developer Smartner Information Systems, as the product and implementation team for the service. The contract was awarded following a competitive tender.

Before service was announced, more than 50 staff at the mobile operator—culled from sales teams and senior management—completed a three-week trial period using the mobile e-mail service. In addition to the publicly available service, Vodafone is also rolling out the service internally to a wide range of employees.

The service was developed jointly by IBM Ireland’s Global Services Division and the company’s ‘Mobile Partner Innovation Centre’ team in Finland.

Although the initial rollout of the service involves e-mail, Vodafone has said that future implementations will cater for more complex applications such as ERP and CRM.

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