HyperOffice – Secure Access to Exchange & Outlook Information Right on your iPhone

Native Exchange Support from iPhone – A big Question Mark

While Exchange support has been announced by Apple recently, it is not expected to be available to business users anytime before June of 2008.

Even when it is once made available to the public, the specifics of it working are still open to conjecture. Even if you are able to push your Outlook mail, contacts, and calendars directly to your iPhone’s native applications, will you further be able to share them with others? How will you allow or deny access? Will all the features of Outlook be available to you on your iPhone? What about tasks, since iPhone does not have an inbuilt task management system? What if you're a small business and can't afford Exchange, but would still like the benefits of Outlook? All one can do is wait and watch until June for these answers when Apple launches Exchange support.

The Current Options

IMAP Access - Since the iPhone’s inbuilt email client supports IMAP, one way to retrieve mail from Exchange is through IMAP. This, however, requires IT administrators to enable IMAP on the Exchange server and open up a port in their network firewall to send and receive email. This could present a serious security risk.

Even after you gain access and sync your mail through this method, contacts, calendars and tasks are still a problem. You will need further workarounds to access this information from your Exchange server. Talk about being hassled.

Outlook Web Access – Another way to access Exchange information on the iPhone is through the Outlook Web Access (OWA) client on the Safari browser. It becomes immediately apparent that the OWA client never was created for Safari on the iPhone. The result is ugly and extremely difficult to use on the small iPhone screen, to say the least. The mobile version of Outlook Web Access is marginally better, but that does not offer the entire feature set. Moreover, you can't do contact or calendar searches on OWA.

The HyperOffice Advantage

It is all the above questions and issues that HyperOffice sought to address. With 10 years of experience in the web-based and mobile collaboration solutions under our belt, we were among the first to harness the potential of the iPhone. Our popular solution, HyperOffice, already offered the answer to most of the above problems, and what remained was to optimize and specifically fit it for the iPhone.

Optimized for iPhone – Like the Outlook Web Client, HyperOffice is a web-based application, which allows you to access your corporate email, contacts, calendars and tasks online & sync them with Exchange. Unlike OWA, HyperOffice for iPhone has specifically been optimized for the iPhone, ensuring that you have a smooth experience and the entire featureset available to you.

Corporate Email on iPhone – HyperOffice acts as a bridge between Exchange and iPhone or Outlook & iPhone. There is no need to modify Exchange settings, create any security vulnerabilities, or install any special programs behind the firewall. All you need to do is install a small program called HyperShare on the PC for your Outlook account. HyperOffice migrates Outlook contacts, calendars and email folders, then automatically delivers email to the email application built into the iPhone. Replies and new messages are relayed back to Outlook or to the corporate Exchange server.

This allows you to securely receive your Exchange/Outlook email on your iPhone email client. HyperOffice offers you the true flexibility of accessing your mail on your Outlook client, iPhone client, or online through your HyperOffice client using any mobile device, Mac or PC web browser. No matter where you access your account, they are automatically syched and upated. You always find the latest information. For example, if you delete an email from your iPhone email client, that’s what you will see if you open your account with Outlook or HyperOffice.

If you so choose, you can also access your email online on your iPhone Safari web browser. HyperOffice’s optimized client for iPhone ensures you have a smooth and fruitful experience.

Access Outlook Contacts, Calendars, & Tasks on iPhone – HyperOffice allows you to access your Outlook contacts, calendars & tasks right on your iPhone. Any changes you make on your iPhone are automatically synched back to your Outlook/Exchange account.

Share Outlook Contacts, Calendars, & Tasks from your iPhone – HyperOffice goes much beyond merely allowing you to access your Outlook information on the iPhone. You can also share Outlook contacts, calendars and tasks with colleagues, clients and partners right from your iPhone.

Access Outlook without Exchange – HyperOffice is also ideal for small to mid-sized companies who find it too expensive to deploy Exchange. HyperOffice acts as an Exchange alternative and allows such companies to set up Outlook on their PC without Exchange, and access Outlook information right from their iPhones. In addition, they can access and sync their Outlook information from any other PC, Mac and mobile device browser.

Total Collaboration – The above is just part of HyperOffice’s capabilities. HyperOffice is a one stop solution for team collaboration, which allows you to collaborate with clients, business partners, employees, and suppliers. Its range of capabilities also includes task management, document storage and collaboration, access permission management, intranet/extranet publishing, forums, polling and so much more.

With iPhone’s rich Safari browser and HyperOffice’s optimized version, you can access all of its features right from your iPhone. You can truly convert your iPhone from a personal information manager to a dynamic collaboration tool.

Learn more about collaboration on the iPhone with HyperOffice.