Sybase iAnywhere Information Anywhere Suite offers enterprises a set of tools for collaboration, security, device management, and application mobilization. The latest version offers enhancements in the areas of collaboration and security.

The updated Collaboration Suite adds support for Instant Messaging (IM) to the existing support for email. Information Anywhere Mobile IM provides enterprise users with a single client for both their corporate and public IM. "We found that enterprise users commonly use more than one IM service," says Senthil Krishnapillai, manager of product management. "For enterprise messaging they may use Lotus Notes Sametime or Microsoft Live Office, while using Google Talk or Jabber to communicate with business or personal contacts outside the enterprise. Mobile IM provides them with a single client for all these communications." Mobile IM ensures that all communications between the enterprise and device are secure and provides mechanisms for messages to be audited and archived, for both enterprise and public IM systems. "Mobile IM allows all the IM communications undertaken on an employee's device to be brought within the organizations messaging standards and policies," says Senthil.

The parallel announcements of enhancements in the Afaria security manager focus largely on data security for portable PCs. These features include: whole device encryption, removable storage encryption, and shared encryption for removable media (which enables legitimate sharing of data on a removable memory device within an organization.). While these features do not currently address security on Symbian devices, Shari Freeman - director of product management - noted that Sybase is working on further security features.

One interesting aspect of the Mobile IM announcement is that support for Symbian devices now appears to be as important as any of the other operating systems traditionally associated with enterprise use. "We feel very strongly about the need to support Symbian devices," says Senthil. "This is backed up by the strong interest we are seeing from our European customers, particularly for Nokia Eseries devices although interest in Sony Ericsson devices is growing."

However, implementing Information Anywhere on Symbian OS devices has not been without its issues. Sybase encountered challenges in the areas of PIM functionality, backward compatibility, and application signing.

For enterprise use, Symbian's core PIM applications have long been perceived as somewhat light on key features. Senthil notes that Sybase found the calendar to be more than adequate, but that Symbian's email client, even on Symbian OS v9.x, was missing features that would typically be associated with enterprise e-mail tasks. These include support for creating meeting invitations and the immediate download of attachments. To overcome these problems Sybase created an e-mail framework. The framework uses the built-in e-mail application to present e-mails to the device user, and extends its functionality with plug-ins to implement the missing functionality.

Email is delivered through the standard Symbian interface

Plug-ins add "missing" functionality

While the historic lag in Symbian support has in part been down to enterprise adoption, another important factor has been technical: The changes between major releases of Symbian OS. "Symbian has changed their platform in the last three major releases," says Senthil. "There has not always been forward compatibility between these releases. This makes it hard for us. We have to spend a lot of engineering time getting our software working on a new release, even before we start to add new features. This has been a significant factor in why our feature set has lagged behind on Symbian devices, compared to other operating systems. However, we have worked hard to ensure the latest features are on Symbian devices, as Symbian is one of the two most important operating systems for us worldwide."

From Shari's perspective a lag in implementation of Information Anywhere's security features on Symbian OS still has a lot to do with enterprise adoption. "Our security products are most popular in companies with large field service forces," says Shari. "To date these organizations have not been strong adopters of Symbian OS devices, however I would expect this to see this change as the newer Eseries and UIQ 3 devices become more readily available."

While the changes in Symbian OS have been problematic for Sybase, they have not been unwelcome. "The new platform security features in Symbian OS v9 are useful in preventing harmful code from getting on to devices, and a useful compliment to our security offerings," says Shari. "At the same time, the requirement for Symbian Signed does make things more difficult for us."

All the latest Information Anywhere Suite components for Symbian are Symbian Signed. Sybase has used the public testing process, specifically choosing CAP Gemini to do the Symbian Signed testing. "Gaining Symbian Signed typically takes about two weeks," says Senthil. "Throughout we have found the support from Symbian and CAP Gemini to be very good." In addition, Sybase has a separate third-party testing house to validate that each Information Anywhere Suite component delivers the same customer experience on all Symbian devices.

The one obvious element missing from iAnywhere's mobile products is voice support. "We've been looking at VoIP," says Senthil. "However at this time we don't believe the technology is sufficiently mature for large deployments."

Support from companies such as Sybase is essential to the growth of S60 and UIQ devices outside the consumer marketplace. With the promise that Symbian OS has gone through most of its radical architectural changes, it will hopefully be easier for Sybase to deliver all the functionality of the Information Anywhere Suite to Symbian OS devices. Given Sybase's global focus, such support is also important to encourage interest from Symbian's missing market, the US.

More information on support for Mobile IM in Symbian OS devices can be found at: www.ianywhere.com/MobileIM. Additional information about Information Anywhere suite is available at: www.sybase.com/informationanywheresuite.