Nokia, Microsoft and Safaricom team up

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July 8, 2010 – Nokia, Microsoft, and Safaricom have teamed up to launch an Activesync for the Nokia Smartphone.

The product is targeted at companies whose workers travel a lot and need to get emails on the go.

It aims to make it possible to work from home and remote locations while still maintaining usage similar to what you would do on a PC, especially regarding chat and email.

Based on the Ovi Store concept where the application and all other Nokia apps are downloaded from, one can get office email in three easy steps.

The Nokia Smartphone has the Nokia Communicator that is the basis of the development. All you need to do is punch-in your email address and password and Voila! You’ve got mail!

According to Kenneth Oyolla, Head of Sales at Nokia East and Southern Africa, it works on the send-and-receive principle, which can be set manually according to a user’s preference.

“Emails are pushed from your office mailbox into your phone’s inbox and all functions are simultaneously synchronised so that what you have in your Microsoft office mailbox on your PC corresponds to what is on the phone,” he says.

This includes your push contacts and calendar alongside the emails.

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Another beautiful feature is the Mode switching on the Communicator. When at home or on holiday, all you need to do is switch the phone to personal mode whereby emails stop coming in and the phone stops all synchronisation until authorized to do so by the phone owner.

The application also has something for those who are conscious about security. You can set the phone to request for a pass-phrase to unlock all the office functions. If the phone is misplaced or worse still stolen and an unauthorized party enters the wrong password 5 times, the Communicator erases everything on the phone and leaves it blank. Cool, right?

And here is some good news for the IT professional who is worried about extra costs for the company: there are no IIS certificates involved!

That means no extra payments, no extra installations and definitely no undue complications.

Safaricom’s role meanwhile is to ensure that the costs of these transactions are minimal.

“It is as simple as that though this will work on Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and above only,” says Dorothy Ooko, Nokia’s Communication Manager for East and Southern Africa.

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