Synchronization specialist Intellisync has launched a new push e-mail service to better compete against the likes of Research In Motion and Visto in the increasingly competitive hosted e-mail market. Intellisync Wireless Email Express (Express) compliments the company's more traditional e-mail offerings.

Express purports to let anyone with a wireless data plan from any carrier and a data-enabled mobile device have true push wireless e-mail in less than 30 minutes, with virtually no IT expertise required for installation and maintenance. It is available to enterprises and workgroups to small to medium-sized businesses.

The company asserts the new hosted service offers the same enterprise-class security and features of its Intellisync Mobile Suite product. It also says Express is one of the fastest and simplest ways to "have a BlackBerry-like experience for wireless email on virtually any data-enabled mobile device."

Express supports Pocket PC, Palm OS, Symbian OS, Windows Mobile Smartphone, and SyncML compliant devices.

In addition to e-mail, Express delivers personal information management (PIM) synchronization that keeps users' inboxes, calendars, contacts, tasks and notes up to date while they are away from the office. It also supports meeting requests, attachment viewing, end-to-end encryption, password protection, and theft/loss protection.

Intellisync’s hosting facility uses multiple, redundant back-up power sources, and multiple and upstream Internet peering to keep data safe.

Corporate Reluctance
Not unlike the early days of cellular voice communications, many enterprises have been disinclined to mobilize e-mail because they simply don't know how it can help their organization. In these cases, companies may want to examine how wireless e-mail could reduce the use of other types of communications, beginning with often-expensive voice minutes.

Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney proffers up the example of how "a business manager might see voicemails dropping precipitously and find real benefits to the fact that messages can be forwarded easily inside and outside the organization."

With wireless e-mail, Dulany says "the overall cost per message delivered is likely to be lower, given the theory that most phone calls are several minutes long and include the time to connect to the person called."

Speaking to PDAStreet & SmartPhoneToday, Intellisync emphasized how an enterprise could try out mobile e-mail with its hosted Express service before moving on to an e-mail platform behind its own enterprise. With a starting fee of around $120 per month and little or no management required by internal IT staff, the investment in Express is minimal compared to an onsite wireless e-mail system.