Both Motorola Good and Research in Motion rely on a central Network Operations Center to handle relaying of messages to and from handhelds. In this setup, the mobile e-mail server sits behind the firewall and establishes a secure outbound connection to the NOC. Two-way communication between the e-mail server and the NOC is established through the outbound initiated connection. Mobile e-mail clients then connect to the centralized NOC, ensuring that no inbound firewall ports need to be initialized.
Both Motorola Good and Research in Motion tout advantages of a NOC-centric model. First, both claim increased security and reliability. Because there are no inbound ports open, there's less security risk to the corporate network. Both vendors also stressed that because messages are encrypted end-to-end, from the mobile e-mail server to the handheld, data cannot be intercepted. RIM also said its architecture is optimized to send the least amount of data possible which, in turn, leads to increased battery performance. We have indeed seen superb battery performance from BlackBerry devices in our past testing.
Vendors who don't use NOCs, like Sybase and Microsoft, argue a NOC introduces a point of failure outside of the enterprise's control, a fact that was demonstrated when Research in Motion's NOC went out in April, leaving millions of users without e-mail access for roughly 12 hours while enterprise administrators were left scrambling to determine whether the issue was in their own network or RIM's. A NOC-based model also requires that more expensive data plans be used—in part to subsidize the NOC—and can limit global coverage. And, because the NOC has direct connections to the carrier's core infrastructure and those agreements take time to set up, it simply does not allow for a truly connection-agnostic model.
Two alternate architectures can be used. The first allows handhelds to connect directly to the e-mail server, an exercise that involves opening ports in the corporate firewall for inbound connections. Because of the security risks involved, a better choice is a relay, or reverse-proxy, server. With this option, a mobile e-mail server resides behind the firewall, and a relay server is placed into the corporate DMZ. The mobile e-mail server establishes an outbound-only connection to the relay server in the DMZ. Handhelds connect to the relay device, offering security advantages similar to a NOC. Building Up: Mobilizing Applications
As we noted earlier, mobile e-mail is a good way to get a mobility strategy started. However, there can often be real value by going further, mobilizing vertical applications such as CRM and SFA to increase the efficiency of your mobile workforce. While there a variety of paths to follow in terms of application mobilization, one option is to look toward your mobile e-mail vendor for help.
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