Chapter 22: Mobile Services in Exchange Server 2003


Overview

Modern workers are more on the go than ever, and timely access to the constantly increasing amount of information about corporate networks has never been more important. The mobile services built into Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 provide access to most Exchange services by mobile devices, such as Pocket PCs and SmartPhones.

Exchange Server 2003 provides mobile services through two mechanisms:

  • Exchange ActiveSync Exchange ActiveSync allows users of Microsoft Windows–powered mobile devices (such as the Pocket PC, Pocket PC Phone Edition, or SmartPhone) to synchronize data with an Exchange server. Users access the information using powerful client software such as Microsoft Pocket Outlook, which provides a rich user experience and duplicates much of the functionality of Microsoft Outlook 2003 or Microsoft Outlook Web Access.

  • Outlook Mobile Access Outlook Mobile Access (OMA) provides access to the Exchange environment through the use of Web browsers and mobile microbrowsers (such as Microsoft Pocket Internet Explorer) using HTML, Extensible HTML (XHTML), and compressed HTML (CHTML). OMA provides access to a wider class of clients (basically any that can use a browser) than using Exchange ActiveSync with Pocket Outlook does, but OMA does not provide as sophisticated an experience.

The mobile services now provided in Exchange Server 2003 were previously supplied by a product named Microsoft Mobile Information Server (MIS). Wrapping many of the mobile services from MIS with Exchange Server 2003 into a single product provides a logical consolidation of services for client access to corporate information. This consolidation allows you to have a single planning and deployment phase as you implement your messaging environment, rather than forcing you to first install Exchange Server 2003 and then install and configure a separate product like MIS.

This consolidation also offers another large advantage. Simply put, the use of Exchange along with MIS (and often third-party products as well) really didn’t work that well, at least not without a lot of hair pulling. The design goal behind including mobile services in Exchange Server 2003 was to make mobile clients able to connect to Exchange directly following installation with little configuration necessary—and to a large degree, this goal is realized.

Note

In a mixed Exchange environment, you must use Exchange Server 2003 for both the front-end and the back-end servers to gain access to mailboxes by using Outlook Mobile Access and Exchange ActiveSync. For mailboxes that are stored on a server that is running Exchange 5.5 and Exchange 2000, deploy Microsoft Mobile Information Server.




Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Administrator's Companion
Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Administrators Companion (Pro-Administrators Companion)
ISBN: 0735619794
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 254

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