Exchange email for iPhone

Synchronica has announced a free trial of its Mobile Gateway 3.0 service, which provides synchronization between Microsoft Exchange and the native e-mail client of the iPhone. The issue with iPhone access to Exchange servers thus far has been the device's ability to only access services via direct IMAP/SMTP connections -- functionality that is blocked by many corporations due to security concerns. However, the new Synchronica tool allows users to send and receive corporate e-mail using their iPhones, without having to install any software on the device or behind the corporate firewall. It uses Microsoft's Outlook Web Access (OWA) to retrieve e-mail from the Exchange server, a service enabled by many enterprises to provide users with access to corporate e-mail from home or while traveling.

Officials from Synchronica said "Replies and new messages are relayed back to the corporate Exchange server and appear in the 'Sent Items' folder in Outlook when the user comes back to the office - no need for the cumbersome 'copy to self' workaround." Data is protected during synchronization by encrypted IMAP/SMTP connections to the iPhone and secure HTTPS connections to Microsoft Exchange. Mobile Gateway provides an IMAP/SMTP proxy for the iPhone, relaying into WebDAV requests - the same protocol used by Microsoft Outlook Web Access (OWA).

by MacNN Staff