CE Software Compels with MobileVision

For some time now, we’ve heard the word “compelling” used to describe just about every aspect of a so-far, less-than-compelling PDA market. Perhaps it’s not as strange as it sounds since manufacturers in all aspects of computing have always found their products to be compelling.

A more sober reflection of the industry shows that today’s devices are indeed far from compelling. However, many people clearly find them enticing. What we need to do now is locate the devices, applications, and services that will truly compel an already enticed audience.

Many have felt that this would come with the teaming of low-cost, high-performance wireless connectivity with the perennial “killer” mobile application, electronic mail. However, many of the most popular systems have either required users to add a new email address to accommodate the new service, or dial-in to their existing email system at higher cost and lower convenience. Both systems tend to complicate an already busy business day.

End of the Remote User?

A new solution is on the horizon. CE Software, developer of QuickMail and the leading provider of Macintosh-based electronic mail systems, introduced the MobileVision application. MobileVision enables QuickMail—and soon ccMail and Microsoft Mail—users to access their regular electronic mailboxes using the new Motorola Marco wireless communicator.

To retrieve messages on the road, a person simply needs to turn on their Marco communicator to have the messages automatically downloaded to their device. The interaction appears seamless as no dial-in or set-up is required, making the operation seem as if it was taking place a bit closer to home. The pleasant side-effect of this is that people need to maintain only a single mailbox.

This led Ford Goodman, president and CEO of CE Software to comment that: “With MobileVision, the term remote user becomes obsolete.” Goodman’s thinking is that people away from the office use the system as if they were on the LAN.

How It Works

Since MobileVision works with the Marco communicator, the application relies on the ARDIS network to perform the wireless transfer. When a person turns on the device, a radio signal is transmitted to the nearest ARDIS tower. The network forwards this message to the InfoTAC radio transceiver attached to the QuickMail server.

Wireless bandwidth being what it is, users on the road will probably not want to see every message in their mailbox. MobileVision enables the user to establish the parameters under which messages will be forwarded using server-based rules. These rules can be tailored to match a sender, recipient, subject, priority, or date criteria. The rules can be modified on the road if necessary.

Getting the Team Spirit

While currently working with its own QuickMail system, CE Software has made it clear that it intends MobileVision to support all the popular LAN-based messaging systems. They are able to do this by using a technology called TeamVision. TeamVision includes both messaging and database components enabling people to use a workgroup application with any underlying database or mail system.

While the first version of MobileVision is written to CE Software’s QuickMessenger API, future versions will be built using TeamVision enabling interoperability with VIM, MAPI, and MHS-based systems.

Pricing and Availability

MobileVision will be available in February and sell through CE Software for $200, $875, and $1500 for 1-, 5-, and 10-user packs respectively. CE Software will also make 50- and 100-user packs available for $5000 and $8000 respectively.

CE Software, Inc.
1801 Industrial Circle
P.O. Box 65580
West Des Moines, IA 50265
(515) 221-1801
(515) 221-1806 (fax)
[email protected]