The challanges involved in implementing Microsoft's push e-mail

For organisations with Microsoft Exchange 2003, Exchange ActiveSync has given users of Windows Mobile devices (and a few others) the ability to synchronise Outlook data (e-mails, calendar etc) over the air for some time. Many smaller organisations have take advantage of this ‘free’ feature although penetration in the Enterprise and Corporate sectors has been poor.

This may have been due to the lack of a ‘push’ solution as found with Blackberry and Good Mobile Messaging. Some users, trying to emulate a push solution, set their devices to sync frequently and then received high GPRS data charges. It could also be due to the current lack of management and security tools.

Microsoft addressed the push functionality, bandwidth compression and security issues with Exchange 2003 SP2 in Q405. However, just loading SP2 onto an organisations Exchange 2003 infrastructure will not enable these new features even for organisations already using ActiveSync over the air. There are a number of other device specific criteria that must be met.

Firstly the handheld must be running Windows Mobile 5.0. If you have a device running an earlier version then an upgrade will need to be purchased. In many cases upgrades will not be made available by the manufacturers as v5.0 has support for many new hardware features (such as persistent memory), which were never within earlier device architectures. As such a major handheld upgrade programme may be required.

Secondly, even users with Windows Mobile 5.0 will need to apply the AKU2 ROM upgrade that contains the Microsoft Messaging and Security Feature Pack, a requirement for the push technology. Although released to the airtime providers back in 05, at the time or writing this article, there were no airtime providers making it available on shipping devices. Once again, a programme of handheld updates or upgrades will be required.

There has been much speculation as to why the AKU2 update has taken so long. As with all speculation this has breed a number of rumours. However, at a recent mobility briefing at Microsoft’s UK Campus in Reading, it was clearly stated that the delay was purely down to the testing and acceptance regimes of the airtime providers. The word on the grapevine is that AKU2 devices may become available some time in March 06. [June 06: There are still very few AKU2 devices available through the major airtime providers.]

There also may be other changes required to the organisations infrastructure to make the push solution work as designed by Microsoft. By default the handheld device is expecting to open a TCP session back into you organisation’s network using SSL for security. The device, by default, expects this session to be open for 30 minutes. However, proxies and firewalls such as Microsoft ISA may have different settings and may prematurely close the session. The ISA default setting is 15 minutes and would need to be altered. Any other device that controls inbound access to your network may need to be looked at to ensure it does not terminate the sessions and in doing stop the push functionality.

Finally, unlike other solutions from Good and Blackberry, there is no 'over-the-air' provisioning available. To enable the handheld device to form a relationship with the server it needs to be sync'd via a PC running ActiveSync and connected to the relevant user/Exchange account. For many larger organisations this involves having to support another application on the workstation and also enable USB ports that may have been previously locked down. Once this initial synchronisation has been performed there should be no further need to connect the handheld to a PC. In practice, rather than having to deploy and support ActiveSync & USB devices, larger organisations will probably initialise the handset within the IT department before delivering it to the end user.

For more information on the availability of Microsoft’s push solution please call Neil Devlin on 01444 232000.