Enhanced Mobile messaging, wireless access to Domino server

With mobile and wireless computing critical elements to organisations making the transition to e-business, Lotus Development has confirmed the shipping of Mobile Services for Domino (MSD) Release 1.0.

The new release will allow Notes and Domino users to send and receive messages and access their Domino server-based information from small, mobile devices using global wireless data networks.

Says Steve Dunbar, marketing manager at Lotus Development SA: "MSD represents an important step toward extending the value of Lotus` collaborative infrastructure. By providing our customers with more options for accessing e-mail and important business applications from virtually anywhere and at anytime, we are further enabling organisations to be more competitive, more responsive to their customers and more connected to their suppliers and business partners."

Shipment of MSD 1.0 coincides with the launch of Lotus` unified messaging strategy. Working in tandem with strategic alliance partners, Lotus` approach converges messaging and wireless technologies to deliver advanced business communication solutions that increase productivity anytime and anywhere with reduced communications costs.

MSD offers two broad sets of features that extend the reach of Domino to small, wireless devices such as cellular phones, pagers, and Palm Computing Platform devices with wireless modems. Through MSD`s Messaging Services users can send and receive short messages, alerts, pages and notifications to mobile devices directly from their Notes desktops.

Additionally, MSD`s Wireless Domino Access (WDA) feature allows users to remotely access Domino servers over wireless data networks and interact with Notes databases and Public Directories using mobile devices equipped with Wireless Access Protocol compatible micro-browsers.

MSD`s Messaging Services automatically convert both Notes and other Domino-supported e-mail messages, such as SMTP, cc:Mail and X.400, in order to transmit them to mobile devices over a variety of wireless networks, including paging services, cellular phone networks and other wireless data networks.

MSD`s Wireless Domino Access feature allows mobile Notes users to employ a variety of small, handheld devices to access information in Domino servers via wireless service providers. WDA users log into the MSD server from handheld devices by entering the HTTP username and password contained in their Domino Directory Person Record. "Once a user has been authorised, they can access critical information from application sources including Notes Mail, Calendar & Scheduling and Public Directory," he explains.

WDA acts as a proxy for handling communications between Domino and cellular phones, Palm Computing devices, or two-way, interactive pagers equipped with WAP-compatible micro-browsers. These micro-browsers use handheld device markup language (HDML) to send requests and receive data via wireless data networks to servers residing at the wireless service provider`s operations centre.

MSD`s Messaging Services and Wireless Domino Access services are configured and administered via a single Mobile Services for Domino database. This database is organised into two main areas: Messaging Services and Wireless Domino Access. The Messaging Services area allows system administrators to manage the individual mobile devices carried by MSD users and the wireless networks subscribed to by the device users.

System administrators can control the list of devices that are given access to the Wireless Domino Access services and can also manage the wireless data network interfaces using easy-to-use and familiar Notes forms and views.