Microsoft catching RIM?
RIM’s enterprise dominance comes to an end
A recent article by Dale Vile suggests that, when thinking about the future of mobile email for their company, the number of large enterprises choosing Microsoft’s Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) Technology is nearly equal to the number choosing RIMs Blackberry solutions.
What’s more, when you examine the article’s data in regards to smaller businesses, EAS pulls ahead and creates a fairly large gap between itself and RIM. In fact, the data shows that companies under 250 employees are (when thinking about the future) more likely to choose EAS over RIM by nearly 3 to 1!
As the article says, it’s important to remember not to think of this survey in terms of devices. It’s easy to equate EAS with Windows Mobile; RIM Blackberry with, well, Blackberry handhelds; and Other with Symbian, Java, etc. The technology discussed in this article, in most cases, is not tied specifically to the handset you are using. Blackberry Connect has made it possible to use Blackberry services on a variety of devices, and applications like RoadSync bring the EAS technology to many different devices outside of the Windows Mobile world. I think the key takeaway from this article is simply that the race for mobile email dominance is clearly not a one man race anymore. Microsoft has a pretty good track record in situations like this, so it should be very interesting to see how RIM handles the challenge.
