First Thoughts on Standardizing on Mobility

My organization is opening a new branch office with two people. It's a small endeavor in a donated space. I'm building the computers now in the New York office to ship over while I come up with a smartphone/PDA solution for the director. For now the land line phone and internet will be shared with the donor organization until we move, so a dedicated phone number for our organization will take the form of a mobile device. Plus, the need for the director to be on the go means email needs to be readily available. Multiple problems arise out of my requirement for streamlined efficiency.

I feel now is the time for me to standardize on a smartphone/PDA solution. Since I prefer central management as much as possible, I don't want to purchase cellphones that require a desktop client. We already have such setups in the New York office for both Blackberry and Treo. Both work fine but I don't see this as a solution when dealing with remote site users. Since we have Exchange 2003, we have ActiveSync. Using a Windows Mobile device, like a Treo 700w, email and contacts can readily flow to the device. With no desktop client to install, there would be less hassles when something does go wrong with the workstation or PDA. A Blackberry server option winds up being an additional expense that, while far more useful for centrally managing mobile devices, is difficult to justify when we already own something that satisfies the general requirement. Still, Blackberry is not out of the equation yet.

There is a problem on the network side. Because it is easy, I was intending these users to be set up on POP3, which means while I can set up their Outlook to leave the mail on the server for a duration of time thereby syncing with the handheld device, their contacts will forever be on their desktop. Alternatively a VPN for Exchange would create constant synchronization and give me a chance to use ActiveSync. Currently a VPN is what we use for two west coast users, though the rest use POP3. VPN is currently handled between server and desktop instead of between firewalls. I fear over time this setup could eat up bandwidth and resources. I might not want to think that long-term though, since a growing organization is a changing one, and just setup a protocol that really works through the immediate future.