Strengths and Weaknesses of Leading BlackBerry Alternatives

Last Friday the U.S. district court once again stopped short of issuing an injunction that would have shut down Research In Motion’s BlackBerry network. The handwriting seems to be very clearly on the wall, however, that RIM will be forced to settle with NTP. Judge Spencer indicated that RIM and NTP "should have settled this by now," and "there is no getting around that RIM is infringing on NTP’s patent rights."

Our belief is that even the briefest of shutdowns is extremely unlikely. There is almost no chance that RIM would ever allow this to occur. The company’s main objective is to delay a settlement for as long as possible and to reduce the eventual cost.

Regardless of the ultimate outcome, the damage has already been done to RIM’s dominance of mobile messaging. Organizations are actively evaluating alternatives to the BlackBerry platform. In a recent informal survey of messaging managers, 50% expected that their organizations would be supporting RIM infrastructure in 2007 — but only 27% expected they would still support it by 2008. These data suggest that the seeds of doubt have already been sown. The good news for RIM is that any shift is likely to face significant hurdles. Senior executives have become very attached to their "Crackberries" and any potential replacement must have clear advantages to convince them to support a switch.

… David Via (editor: Richi Jennings)

Cloudmark is best known for its desktop spam and phishing control product, Cloudmark Desktop, and from its open source roots, Vipul’s Razor. However, when viewed purely in terms of user counts, Cloudmark’s server-based technologies are far more popular. This is mainly thanks to installations at ISPs — either directly via the Cloudmark Authority product, or via OEM deals with MTA vendors such as Sendmail and Openwave.

Cloudmark argues, convincingly, that its technology is good for ISPs because the spam filtering decisions are based not on a set of rules created manually, but on using statistical signatures, which are automatically generated from user reports and spamtraps. Filtering based on signatures is more efficient in terms of computing resources than filtering using a set of rules.

Because the typical ISP business model is high-volume/low-margin, efficient use of server horsepower is very important.

… Richi Jennings, with thanks to Cloudmark’s Brenda Ropoulos

The computing and telephony worlds are gradually coming together. A common myth says that phone companies are much more concerned about standards than computer vendors. For example, telcos spend years defining standards in enormous detail and testing them before deploying them. On the other hand, computing firms are much happier to let them evolve informally. This is false:

• There are all sorts of standards that the computing world cares about; for example, network protocols and connectors, standard APIs to operating system interfaces, floppy disk formats, and printer plugs.
• Telephony has only standardized certain things. All sorts of important standards are missing, at least from the user perspective; for example, a standard number to access directory inquiries, standards for user voicemail interfaces, and a standard for sound quality.

The confusion arises because the world of computing is so much larger. From the computing standpoint, telephony is just one application among a huge number of applications. New applications are constantly evolving, and where appropriate, standards are constantly evolving. In contrast, the world of telephony evolves only very slowly, and in very limited ways. 

… David Ferris

Additional Thought on Phishing Complaints

ISPs Should Offer IM Security Solutions

At the 3GSM World Congress, Microsoft announced that several new Windows Mobile 5 (WM5) devices would ship with the Messaging and Security Feature Pack (MSFP) installed. The MSFP allows push email from a Microsoft Exchange 2003 server to a Windows Mobile 5 device.

Microsoft’s mobile email solution has some advantages over BlackBerry and other push email solutions:

• There is no need for an additional server to push email to devices.
• There is no requirement to purchase Client Access Licenses (CALs) for each device.
• Since it’s a single vendor solution — including the Exchange infrastructure itself — product support should be more consistent (there’s "one throat to choke" when something goes wrong).

While ActiveSync synchronization has been around for a while, the "push email" component was inelegant in previous versions. This has changed for WM5 — the SMS messages that were used to notify the device to pull email have been eliminated. There have been setbacks with a few of the wireless vendors where WM5 devices were released without the MSFP available at launch. Users expecting the push email out of the box were certainly disappointed to learn that it’s not yet available for certain devices. While the MSFP is now being shipped with certain devices as the announcement referenced above indicates, the initial launch was a disappointment.

Microsoft’s approach looks promising, but will take time to mature before it can fully compete with the likes of RIM .

… Scott Bolser (editors: Richi Jennings and David Via)

How Brand Owners Should Act on Phishing

Groups that want to communicate have a choice between pushing messages out to their members via mailing lists or feeds, or allowing them to pull messages from news groups or Web sites.

Several years ago, the popular services available were typified by bulletin boards (pull) and mailing lists (push). Today there are many choices, including blogs, wikis, hybrid push/pull Web services such as Yahoo and Google Groups, and event-specific webinars or Web meeting spaces.

It is important to keep in mind that mailing lists can easily push 10 to 20 messages or more per day to their members. This often leads to end-user turnoff — people simply stop reading. That can be a good indication that it is time to switch to a pull mechanism, such as a wiki. With a pull model, people can digest the information on their own schedule and at their own pace. Alternatively, groups can choose a hybrid model such as a wiki or blog that also publishes an RSS feed. These tools allow the users to choose between pulled Web access or pushed reading of feeds (the value of RSS is that it allows changes to be pushed to the desktop, rather than having to pull them). 

… Janet Asteroff (editors: Richi Jennings and David Via)

(Footnote: When we say "pull" or "push" we’re referring to the user experience, not the underlying technology. For example, the user experience of RSS feeds is push, although the technology involves a client that automatically pulls new content.)