The following are best practices from this chapter:
If mobility functions are not used in the organization, the Exchange administrator should disable the Pocet PC and the Outlook Mobile Access mobility services from the Exchange Service Manager utility.
To create a secured mobile connection from mobile devices to the Exchange 2003 server, SSL should be enabled and used rather than the simple Port 80 unsecured access.
Although a VPN connection can be used to create a secured connection from a mobile device to an Exchange 2003 server, the overhead of the VPN on a relatively low mobile wireless connection could greatly degrade performance. Using SSL for the mobile connection can provide security without all the overhead.
Organizations with only a few users, or a large organization with a small remote site, may choose to set up Exchange mobility on a single server that hosts both the Exchange mailboxes and acts as the front-end server where users with mobile devices connect for mobile mail, calendar, and contact access.
Organizations that have a lot of users connecting to their Exchange server(s) should consider splitting off the front-end server functions to a dedicated server. This enables better scalability for user connections to Exchange, and also provides an additional layer of security between user -connected servers and the back-end database housing information.
Using the Pocet PC 2003 Emulator that is available to be downloaded from Microsoft can help an organization evaluate the functions of Pocet PC mobility and creates a simple way for the organization to test whether mobility and mailbox synchronization is working properly, thus isolating any phone carrier or public wireless network problems that might be preventing successful operations.
The Pocet PC Emulator can also help an organization train its workforce on how to use mobility functions of the Pocet PC device. The full functions of the mobile device can be run on a workstation or server and displayed on a projection system, or screen shots can be taken for documentation.
Mobile phone emulators that can be downloaded off the Internet from companies such as OpenWave.com can also simplify the testing process of mobile access. Running OMA functions from an emulator can also simplify the testing, training, and documentation process of validating mobility.
The simplest way to migrate from Microsoft Mobile Information Server on Exchange 2000 to Exchange 2003 mobility is to add an Exchange 2003 server to an existing Exchange 2000 site and move mailboxes over to the new server. This minimizes the risk of failure of uninstalling MMIS from a server and conducting an in-place upgrade on a production server.
