Advisor: What's the role of Domino Everyplace?

Magee: You can already access a Domino application from any wireless device that has a Web browser without Everyplace. Most devices even support SSL and authentication. However, there are two problems. First is security; you don't want to keep secure corporate data in the demilitarized zone (DMZ) where it's vulnerable to hackers. Second is the alphabet soup of wireless markup languages; your application won't look or work correctly on many devices without a lot of manual HTML tweaking to account for differences between WML, XHTML, cHTML, etc.

Domino Everyplace Access Server (DEAS) takes care of these two problems. Everyplace server software runs in the DMZ, acting as a secure broker between the Internet and your behind-the-firewall Domino servers, as well as a real-time translator between HTML and whatever markup language is supported by the requesting device. Also in the Everyplace family, Domino Everyplace Enterprise Server (DEES) 2.6 supports data synchronization to a Palm or Pocket PC Mobile Notes client as opposed to accessing it in real-time through a wireless browser.

In December 2002, IBM merged the secure real-time data and e-mail browsing capability of DEAS and the instant push notification of Domino Everyplace Short Message Server (DESMS). This combined product, Domino Everyplace 6 (DE6), runs on Domino 5 and 6.

The big news, though, is that this package, formerly US$6,429 per DESMS server and $99 per user for Domino Everyplace Access, is now $58 per user with no server software cost. If you already purchased an older version of the server-priced Everyplace product line, IBM gives you credit for DE6 seats. I'm a techie, not a reseller, so why is this pricing important to me? It means I can quickly prototype secure wireless access to Domino applications for my clients without them having to invest in expensive server software. DE6 takes about half a day to install, doesn't require your Domino data to reside in your DMZ, and works with most wireless browsing devices and data services.

Advisor: What device developments interest Notes/Domino developers?

Magee: Research in Motion (RIM) previewed a version of BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) for Domino that gives secure access to corporate data from a RIM pager in addition to its existing robust Domino e-mail access. It will be $3,000 per server for the first 20 users, plus about $30-40/month per user for BlackBerry wireless service, depending on your carrier. Although RIM pagers make for a more proprietary solution than IBM Lotus's device-agnostic offering, RIM's e-mail implementation is very popular.

Newer breeds of hardware are delivering on the all-in-one device promise, yet they still fit in your pocket. Phones are becoming more common in wireless PDAs, which mean users are more likely to carry them around. Java2 Micro Edition (J2ME), PalmOS, and Pocket PC application platforms facilitate third-party applications such as Mobile Notes to sync with your corporate data in addition to or instead of browsing. Always-on GPRS data services offered by some wireless carriers make Web access affordable and instant messaging actually useful. Keyboard and display technologies let users enter information more quickly and see more of your application screen at once. For example, T-Mobile's Sidekick offers a phone, PDA, always-on browser/e-mail/AIM client, and a high-resolution display that pivots to reveal a backlit QWERTY keyboard. All these advances increase accessibility and ultimately the acceptance of wireless applications.

Advisor: What skills does the "traditional" Lotus developer need to succeed with mobile/wireless development?

Magee: DE6 takes care of the markup language translation details, but Domino developers still have to be aware of screen size and color constraints. Although higher resolution (240+ pixels wide) full color is becoming more common, most devices still only support greyscale Web page rendering, and some support only monochrome text at relatively low resolutions. So, it's important to keep your user interfaces simple and clean. For example, put your important content in the upper left instead of a graphical logo that becomes a scrolling obstacle. Also, JavaScript doesn't work on many handhelds, so you may have to implement functionality such as validation formulas on the Domino back-end in addition to a JavaScript event. Notes/Domino 6 offers a new hide-when checkbox for mobile clients, so you can fork your code for PCs and handhelds.

Advisor: How are you doing mobile business?

Magee: MartinScott isn't a large company, and we're very mobile. Customers calling our main phone number sometimes get routed to one of us on a mobile phone. If a customer wants to place a credit card order, we enter the order on our secure order system while encrypting transmissions of the card number and customer data. Using DE6, we're developing a mobile Web interface that lets me input an order on my PDA, submit it using encryption, and have my Domino server perform a live credit card transaction, all while I'm still on the phone with the customer. They get a confirmation e-mail before we hang up, and they never even know I'm not in the office (unless they hear the surf in the background!). With DE6, we can become truly mobile and help our clients get there, too.