Originating Author: Kaushik Das
Wireless email is an important business tool for today's enterprises and an entrepreneurial solution to maximize the employees’ business potential and gain a competitive edge. Since businesses now send as much as 60% of their business-critical data via email, accessing emails wirelessly means business success for many organizations by providing rapid customer communication, faster decision-making and collaboration from distant places. Wireless email also creates significant productivity gains for all businesses irrespective of their size. For example, Radicati group (http://www.radicati.com/uploaded_files/news/WE03PR.pdf) has found that wireless email will allow each employee to put an extra 80 minutes of work every day to the enterprise by end-2007.
IT managers and administrators face significant deployment and operational challenges when empowering employees with wireless email. Changing technology and shifts in the way people and businesses work add complexities to the straightforward goal of providing wireless access. The main criteria for deploying wireless email are that it be easy to set up, easy to manage and affordable. In addition, the technology management staff must provide adequate security against the various threats the safety of enterprise data.
The specific challenges for IT managers/administrators are:
- Addressing the needs of all mobile employees by choosing the appropriate wireless device and appropriate wireless service(s) based on availability, cost and security. The solution must integrate devices and networks with an easy-to-manage enterprise solution.
- Developing a seamless ability to move between two dissimilar mobile networks and remain connected to the enterprise. For example, the solution should allow access email via an on-campus data network and off-campus cellular service(s).
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Capability of wireless email infrastructure
Wireless email allows employees of the enterprise to stay connected with the corporate office anytime, anywhere. It also provides mobility to bring convenience and efficiency in business communication. Using wireless email, today's enterprise employees not only remain connected with other employees of the organization but are also extremely responsive to their key customers and suppliers (queries or support requests). One major benefit of wireless email is that through it employees are available for information, service, decisions and creative collaboration. The wireless email infrastructure:
- Allows employees to communicate by email from anywhere - on the road, out of the office or just away from desk,
- Extends desktop emails to wireless handsets, PDA or laptops,
- Allows seamless email access across devices either with an email or web browser client,
- Allows sending, receiving, forwarding and managing e-mails from these devices ,
- Allows reading and editing attachments,
- Alerts employees of message arrival on any mailbox (e.g., when actual email delivery is not possible because of encryption or non-coverage).
Specific operational goals of architecting wireless email
Expected effects on the IT budget
A significant issue for an IT manager is to implement an effective, reliable, cost-effective wireless solution with low total cost of ownership (TCO). This is particularly true since all the benefits of the system will accrue to business operations, while the IT budget will have to absorb an increase in infrastructure spend.
The TCO includes:
- Initial implementation costs including handset and other hardware, software, installation and training;
- Cost for wireless data services or plan; and,
- IT management (upgrade, maintenances) and end-user support costs.
For a ball-park estimate of TCO for a mid-size organization, see the table below. These figures assume a Standard Wikibon business model organization with $1 billion in revenue, with 4,000 employees and an IT budget of $40 million per year.
Item | Estimated Cost | Estimated Total Cost |
---|---|---|
Deployment cost |
| $2.2M-to-2.7M |
Wireless data plan | $50*4000*12 | $2.4M per annum |
IT management (upgrade, maintenances) and end-user support costs | Cost for 6-8 IT management FTE | $1.0 per annum |
Source: SanPro
The major expected business productivity improvements include:
- Out-of-office connectivity between employees and the enterprise, clients and business associates, anytime, anywhere;
- Increased responsiveness to queries and support requests from key customers and suppliers;
- Improved convenience and efficiency in business communication and support for work-at-home and similar flexible work arrangements;
- Faster distribution of internal information, alerts, service bulletins, etc. to out-of-office and field sales and support personnel;
- Improved opportunities for collaboration across time zones, national boundaries, and continents.
Risks of implementing wireless email
Wireless connectivity, however, does come with its own risks. Mitigating those effectively while meeting the service level agreement (SLA) requires a solution that combines people, technology and processes. To achieve success, the wireless email architecture should assess risks in three main categories:
- Device and server - it's always tricky to know the correct requirements for interoperability, security and reliability for a mid-size business. Also, a backup infrastructure must be in place in case something goes wrong.
- Performance demand - businesses like to ensure 24/7/365 availability (with no downtime or performance degradation). IT managers need to implement a resilient system that offers uninterrupted wireless service.
- Legal compliance and judicial discovery requirements – New business regulations including the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) in the United States, impose security and discoverability requirements on data, including email and IM messages, that must be taken into account in wireless solutoin design.
The wireless email initiative
The wireless email initiative will be implemented when an enterprise architects, designs, procures software and hardware components, implements and tests the wireless email system. This initiative will ensure that that the intended users (enterprise employees) can use the system effectively and degradation is within the defined acceptable range.
Analyze Phase
Acceptance test considerations:
The analyze phase will be completed when the initial business case has been accepted by the sponsor, and an agreement has been reached to proceed to the design phase or kill the project.
Key analysis milestones:
The analysis should take about 1-2 months for most companies:
- Existing and future wireless email requirements:
- Analyse the requirements for enterprise architecture policy for wireless email.
- Understand the requirements for wireless devices and networks, both present and future, including determining the number of users, amount of data traffic expected, and growth characteristics of the future wireless services such as IM, video, and access to data analysis systems such as CRM and ERP.
- Understand the extent to which desktop email is currently used for key transactions (contract negotiation/selling of goods and services) and how it can be extended to wireless email.
- Understand the email storage constraints on wireless device (size of mailboxes, amount of storage in mailboxes.
- Understand the backup requirements for IT and end-users.
- Key business objectives defined and presented:
- Deployment and operational cost:
- Design a first-pass wireless email system and get agreement on the budget from the viewpoint of cost of equipment, services, IT staff, and user staff to implement and maintain the wireless email system.
- Best-in class productivity, reliabiliy and security:
- Get agreement on user productivity benefits;
- Define, evaluate, and gain agreement on wireless email security policies:
- Define reporting procedures for security breaches and analysis procedures to avoid breach repetition;
- Document security policy.
- Get different stake holders (such as IT, legal, senior management) to work as a team to deal with security issues;
- Get agreement on reducing email risks (such as litigation, fines) in the form of judicial discovery - some of the risks associated with desktop email should be re-examined and re-applied for wireless email system;
- Get agreement on the reliability aspect such as uninterrupted service, or minimum downtime for the wireless email system;
- Get agreement on the administration and management tools necessary to monitor, troubleshoot and maintain an end-to-end system.
- Deployment and operational cost:
Design Phase
Acceptance test considerations
The design phase will be deemed complete when the design has been accepted by the sponsor and agreed to by key groups such as IT, legal and senior management, and agreement has also been reached to deploy or kill the initiative.
The design phase should take about 2 months for most companies.
Key considerations and design milestones
- Decide on the design based on ease of set-up, management and use, and top-notch security, including selection of authentication software.
- Develop the design based on:
- Number of wireless email users,
- Growth characteristics of the future wireless service, and,
- Storage constraints on wireless device (size of mailboxes, amount of storage in mailboxes) for downloading attachments to the device.
- Select:
- Wireless device – this normally dictates the actual wireless email platform (e.g., a push based email system), provisioning and how employees access the emails. For example, the enterprise must determine if the wireless device will require an email client or a WML-based Web browser client. Also, provisioning is important - for example, over-the-air provisioning versus cradling to a PC.
- Email platform – This is based on two available options: 1) a behind-the-firewall, server-based solution versus 2) an outsourced network-based solution. In the first case, employees can access the corporate email wirelessly. In the second, a wireless carrier network takes on the deployment, administration and maintenance of enterprise wireless email access. In the latter case, information typically resides in the carrier networks.
- Software and licensing option.
- Choose the server (if any) to manage the enterprise solution. A single server solution which supports a variety of wireless devices and is also network dependent is preferable. Another issue is easy upgrading and maintenance of server-side software (if required) for the solution.
- Design end-user support for the initial deployment and upgrades. The preferable approach does not require IT to touch individual devices – software can be installed over-the-air.
- Create a design that that can handle deployment growth, wireless application growth and mission critical applications.
- Decide on appropriate tools for system management (e.g., to monitor, troubleshoot and maintain the end-to-end system):
- Pay particular attention to the existing desktop email service to manage wireless email reliably and effectively;
- Determine training requirements for operations (for both users and IT admininstrators;
- Determine synchronization requirements;
- Ensure interoperability between back-end wireless email servers and devices.
- Select the primary vendor:
- Select vendor hardware and software technologies available and issue RFP/solicit bids
Deploy Phase
This phase should take about 2-3 months.
Acceptance test considerations
The implementation phase is complete when the new wireless email infrastructure is installed, tested and brought into service. The system should be evaluated for its performance, usefulness and user-friendliness.
Key deployment milestones
Organizations often use activity milestones similar to those below when deploying a wireless email infrastructure:
- Wireless email infrastructure built:
- Installation of hardware and software functionality - installed at points identified in the design phase;
- Installation of any changes required to current (desktop) email system;
- Smooth transitioning to the new system;
- Updating and creating new processes and procedures, with full documentation.
- Wireless email infrastructure tested:
- Testing of equipment, software, and features (functionalities);
- Migration to the new wireless email infrastructure.
- End-user issues verified:
- User training and documentation completed;
- Training of support desk operatives and in documentation updates completed.
- Business issues tested:
- Testing for back up, availability, downtime and recovery successfully completed;
- Compliance with legal requirements, including capability for judicial discovery, revisited and verified.
- Wireless infrastruture initiative wrapped up:
- Procedures set up for full operation monitoring (availability, downtime, recovery);
- Procedures set up for weekly, monthly and annual testing;
- Procedures set up for adding more functionalities, and risk reduction applications;
- Final review of documentation complete;
- All project staff released and fully handed-over to IT operations.