Always On Email is a fully featured multi-user push email solution, which delivers email to users wherever, whenever.
It complements established email applications, offering choice of Pocket PC based PDAs or Microsoft based Smartphones, and choice in the transport technology (GSM, GPRS, Bluetooth, WiFi).
The GPRS infrastructure consists of 2 key elements:
1] Enterprise server
The Always On Server is designed to be deployed on a Microsoft Windows server situated on a corporate network. The server uses MAPI (Message Application Programming Interface) and CDO (Collaboration Data Objects) to monitor users' Microsoft Exchange mailboxes. When new mail arrives in an inbox, the Always On server stores a reference to the email until their PDA picks it up. When the user connects, the server retrieves the message, removes all unnecessary formatting, compresses, encrypts, and pushes it to the PDA.
The Always On server is designed to be run by the IT department and, so includes features for administrators to tailor the service to individual users' needs - eg the ability to add and remove accounts, and providing control over attributes like message truncation levels on a global and individual basis.
2] Client for PDA / Smart Devices
Written in C/C++, the PDA client resides on the user's device, maintaining a connection to the Always On Server using UDP/IP over GPRS, GSM or WiFi. If mail destined for the PDA clients is waiting on the Always On server, and a data connection is available, it decrypts, decompresses and presents the mail message to the user in the Pocket Inbox.
The client must be able to connect to the public internet (or wherever the Always On Server resides). This connection is made via an inbuilt GPRS module, or Bluetooth, infrared or cable, to a device capable of GPRS, GSM or WiFi connectivity.
In addition to delivering email, the software uses status messages to communicate between the PDA and the Always On Server to update the status of email messages (eg read, unread, deleted, or sent) so the PDA and office based email account always present the same view of a user's inbox.
Security: The application uses 128-bit triple DES (3DES) to encrypt all messages that are moved between the Always On Server and the PDA client. This means that only the Always On Server and the PDA client can decrypt and read messages.
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