Cell Phones

A Return to Dry Land (and a little bit about cellular coverage at sea)

Just got back from my vacation, and I’m pretty sure the batteries have been recharged, but I’m still trying to get geared back up. I really did manage to disconnect (for the most part) on this vacation, and as I said in my previous post – it is a good idea once in a while.

That being said, I did keep an eye on things while I was at sea, but mostly to insure that nothing major was melting down and also to keep my inbox from being a total mess when I returned. My phone never left the cabin during the trip, but I did check it once a day to clear things out. I left instructions to my staff to mark things urgent if anything earth-shattering did happen, but luckily we dodged that bullet. I’m a huge believer in the philosophy that a manager should be able to disappear without having things fall apart. There is very little that I do where I’m not “backed up” by a member of my staff. The only exception to that are things such as performance review and similar staffing issues.

One of the things which did surprise me during the cruise was the ability to stay connected. Our ship offered a service called Cellular at Sea, and it provided outstanding service for the duration of the cruise. The service works with just about every carrier, and being an AT&T customer I found that I had about 4 bars of 3G coverage in my cabin. The service shuts down while you’re in port, so you’re on your own in picking up local coverage if any is available.

You do need to keep in mind that you’re roaming while using the service, and costs can go up accordingly. This wasn’t a huge concern for me, because I didn’t use the phone for any voice calls. I did bump my kids’ text service up to allow for international text messaging, and I’m hoping that saved me a few bucks. They did limit their use of texting, so I’m hoping the hit isn’t too bad when I see next month’s bill.

iPhone Mania

Holy cow! Is anyone else’s e-mail inbox filling up with news items about the imminent changes to the iPhone? Before Noon today, I received 4 different news articles and newsletters featuring headlines and stories about the upcoming announcements which are still a week away. I can hardly wait for next Monday afternoon to see what the actual announcement itself will bring. The buzz Apple manages to create surrounding their product announcements is truly something to be admired.

Yes, I do think the iPhone will make some significant inroads into corporate IT as a result of the upcoming changes, chief among them the addition of 3G and Activesync. We’ve already got between 5-10 employees with iPhones, and they’re already using them to hit Exchange via Outlook Web Access. For us, connecting them via Activesync makes a lot more sense, and it should add some significant security features such as the ability to perform a remote wipe. However, we are an ad agency, so what makes sense for us might not make quite as much sense for other industries.

Frankly, it will be much more interesting to see what happens in those other industries. Will corporate IT be as willing to accept iPhones on their systems? I’m guessing they won’t be as receptive as we are, but I’m also well aware of how difficult it is to say no to the CEO.

The iPhone – an Enterprise device?

Now that Apple has announced the long-awaited SDK for the iPhone, I thought it would be a good time to discuss mobile devices. We’ve had a policy restricting employees from purchasing their PDAs/Phones and tying them into our network, but over the past 5 years we’ve still managed to reach the point where we’re currently supporting 3 different platforms/devices (Palm, Blackberry, and Windows) .

We certainly didn’t wake up one day and decide that it would be a good idea to support three different mobile platforms. In fact, from what I’ve seen and heard, we arrived at this point like many others have done. A senior manager or CEO shows up on our doorstep with a new device and says “make this work” I envy those of you who are able to successfully fend off all of these requests, and I would note that we do manage to deny more requests than we approve.

I’ll actually take responsibility for introducing the 3^rd platform, which was Windows Mobile. I was never particularly fond of adding Blackberry or Goodlink servers to my environment, so when Microsoft added push capability to the Exchange servers I already owned, I jumped in with both feet. Don’t get me wrong, the Blackberry and Goodlink servers are both good products, but given the opportunity I’m more than willing to eliminate the middleman. I also find the provisioning process to be much simpler on the Windows platform. We’re currently in the process of phasing out a Goodlink server which supports the Palm devices, so soon we’ll only be supporting two platforms.

Which brings me to the iPhone, and I’m certain that our phasing out of the Palm platform and Goodlink will coincide with our phasing in of the iPhone as an Enterprise platform. In my mind, the recent announcement of ActiveSync support for the iPhone seals the deal in terms of our supporting this platform. We’ve already got several senior managers using the iPhone, and they’re actually content to access e-mail via Outlook Web Access. Once we can deliver push e-mail directly from Exchange, I can’t see any reason not to use this device as an option for mobile e-mail, particularly in our business. I’m thrilled that it’s going to work directly with Exchange. We’re signed up for the beta, and I look forward to testing this as a mobile option for our organization.