Wireless Email: What Was And What Is
E-mail on the beach. Querying a database from an airplane. Faxing from the Beemer. These concepts, both frightening and alluring, are among the promises of wireless computing.
While a lack of standards, high costs, and technology hurdles are inhibiting universal usage of wireless networks, new solutions are emerging to support wireless access to LAN-based E-mail. Third- party products that support a variety of LAN-E-mail packages are joining the vendor-specific wireless clients that companies such as Microsoft Corp., Lotus Development Corp., and Da Vinci Systems Corp. already offer for their respective E-mail offerings. According to industry analysts and vendors, this horizontal application could be the spark that ignites the wireless data-services market.
Wireless E-mail software that can access LAN-based E-mail is designed for the traveling professional who has LAN-based E-mail but does not want to maintain two mailboxes.
“If you are always wireless, then a product such as [RadioMail Corp.’s] RadioMail gives you a specific wireless mailbox so your point of contact is always wireless,” said Eldon Greenwood, director of product marketing for servers and infrastructures at Novell Inc.’s Groupware division, based in Provo, Utah. For those returning to an office with LAN E-mail,
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