Staying Connected While on the Run
December 20th, 2006Many small businesses are looking to deploy mobile solutions just like the ones found in the enterprise space. Fortunately we’ve seen an increase in options available at a small business price point, which means that it’s quite likely there is a perfect solution for your business environment.
At the very basic level, there are the devices that connect to your system and “sync” with your messaging and contact platform (Outlook, Palm Desktop, etc). With these devices, it’s usually just a matter of connecting your phone to the computer with a USB cable, and pressing a button within the software or on the phone itself to synchronize your data. Often times this means bringing your calendars and contact information up-to-date. For businesses that aren’t generally mobile, but like to have this information available when they are, this is the best solution. The price point is very low and it doesn’t require any additional functionality from your service provider.
Next is designed for the small office that has a highly mobile users and requires sychronization with email, as well as other contact and calendar information. This can be accomplished by installing software on your local PC and having redirect your message, contact, and calendar information back-and-forth between your desktop and your phone. This solution requires that you leave your local PC on and often requires additional functionality from your service provider.
Finally, you have the fully-integrated system. The fully-integrated systems communicate with your email server and can share email, contacts, calendar, and tasks between the mobile device and your email server. This configuration creates a seemless integration of your desktop and mobile environments. Of course, there are additional costs for this type of integration, but in most cases it’s affordable, even for small businesses.