Palm believes its Palm Wireless Messaging Solution offers a lower total cost of ownership and faster return on investment for enterprises than similar, competitive products. The total functionality of the solution, including manageability, flexibility, setup/activation, and support and service plans, are designed to help IT departments streamline deployment. For example, IT departments will only need to contact one support center to handle any questions on the entire enterprise solution. As for security concerns, the new solution's enterprise-oriented security has end-to-end encryption behind the firewall. This should directly protect your enterprise's valuable information and resources.

The Palm i705 Wireless Messaging Solution began beta testing at Fortune 1000 companies in the United States in February, and should be commercially available in the summer. The solution comprises the following components:

• The secure, behind-the-firewall Palm Wireless Messaging Server;
• An Enterprise Software Suite;
• Palm IT technical support;
• The Palm.Net enterprise wireless service;
• The Palm i705 handheld.

We'll take a closer look at each of these.

Palm Wireless Messaging Server
Basically, the Palm Wireless Messaging Server is the infrastructure that connects to the Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Domino groupware server, located behind the corporate firewall, and securely sends and receives encrypted emails to and from the Palm i705 handheld. The end-to-end encryption is based on industry-standard symmetric key algorithms. The server scales to host large volumes of mobile users. It's also designed to fit seamlessly into an enterprise infrastructure without requiring significant changes to security policies or existing groupware servers.

Additional server security is provided by password-protected access that leverages native enterprise authentication services supported by Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Domino. Administrators use a graphical administrative tool to manage the users, monitor usage via SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol), and view activity and event logs.

The Palm MultiMail Deluxe email client lets you send and receive email (both pushed to the device and pulled) to and from both your business and personal accounts using the same email client. Palm lets you manage which emails you want sent to your handheld through the use of filters. The filters are configured on the handheld and then wirelessly sent to the server, where they are executed. You may also synchronize your email onto the handheld from your desktop PC. The MultiMail client works in both online and offline modes, so you can work seamlessly at all times, even when out of wireless coverage.

Enterprise Software Suite
The Enterprise Software Suite is bundled with the solution on an expansion card in order to transform the handheld from a standalone device to be part of an enterprise-wide solution. To set up each device, IT managers insert the Palm expansion card into the handheld, and the card automatically launches a utility that flashes ROM with new applications and copies additional software into RAM. A menu is then displayed that facilitates the configuration of the device to use the messaging server. The expansion card can be customized by the IT departments by adding their companies' standard applications to the card. That way, corporate applications are installed on the devices at the same time they are provisioned for the Palm Wireless Messaging Solution.