This application from Motorola provides complete synchronization of your
Exchange folders with a PDA.
It also provides you a lot of customization options for viewing content. The
application integrates with your PDA and works as if it were part of the
embedded OS.
The 'Good' screen gives you a very user friendly interface and provides you
with easy navigation for Good and non-Good Mobile Messaging services, contacts
and notifications.
You can also get RSS feeds right in your mobile device to keep yourself
updated.
GMM provides you the option of choosing feeds within the existing RSS feeds
or you can add the URL if the RSS feed is not available on the list.
One GMM server is capable of handling approx 1000 users. And it requires
Exchange 2007 at the backend.
Once you start the installation of GMM make sure that you have assigned proper rights to the GoodAdmin user such as 'Send As' else you can get error |
Security is taken care of by FIPS certified 192-bit AES encryption for the
data which is being transferred over the air and also for data which is stored
on the mobile device.
Now you might be wondering that as Exchange 2007 can do all the above
mentioned functions so how is this solution different?
Well! The answer lies in the kind of control it provides to the administrator
over the PDA, in addition to providing synchronized messaging with the PDA.
With GMM you can create policies for mobile devices (handsets) and allocate
it to users. For example, let's say you don't want your R&D team to use their
phone's camera and snap pictures of your valuable IP.
Or let's say you don't want your employees to send out or copy data using
Bluetooth, then you can create restricted policies for them by disabling the
appropriate functionalities in the devices.
You can create such a policy for a single user or you can apply such policies
to a group of users depending upon the requirement.
Not only that, but in case your device gets stolen, you can even remotely
delete all the data from the device. All you need is a Net connection with the
device.
This makes sure no one can access sensitive data that you have on your mobile
device.
Installing it
Installing this solution on your enterprise network along with the deployed
MS Exchange solution is pretty simple. You don't need to alter your existing
network architecture.
GMM also makes the manageability easy for administrators; you can install,
manage and upgrade the mobile device within the console.
These mean that the system administrator doesn't have to go to each person to
ask for the mobile device to troubleshoot, he can do this just by sitting
remotely on his desk.
You can view information such as hardware/software type and version and radio
connectivity of the handheld device from the same console.
First you need to install GMM server which manages your users and the
handheld mobile devices associated with that user.
Next you have to install the GMM console which provides you the front end for
the GMM server.
For creating public folder on Exchange 2007, open the Exchange console and click on the 'New Public Folder Database' under the 'First Storage Group' section |
The GMM console can even be installed on any other machine where GMM server
is not running, only the console system should have access to the GMM server.
Another optional component that can be installed is the Good Mobile Intranet
Server. It provides wireless access to the back-end server.
For evaluating this product we first created a domain on a machine with
Windows Server 2003 SP2 and then deployed Exchange 2007.
Then we created a public folder on Exchange 2007; this is required to enable
Good Messaging Calendar's free/busy scheduling service. Without this the GMM
server would refuse to get installed.
We then installed GMM on another machine. We created a user name GoodAdmin in
the ADS and then created a mailbox for the associated user. For the GoodAdmin
user we granted the required rights or permissions, such as reading metadata
properties, creating named properties in the information store, creating rights
for receiving and sending, etc.
Once again we created a new user in the ADS, 'user1' (say) and associated
mail box in Exchange 2007. Then we opened the GMM console and added the 'user1'
to it.
As soon as the user is added a mail is sent across to the user, whom we have
added to the GMM. The email had the necessary information that is required to
install GMM client on the PDA or smart phone of the user.
Information such as where to download the GMM client from, PIN number for
mobile devices with a QWERTY keyboard and a simple numeric keypad; and the
procedure for installation.
Once the user gets mail, he can open the URL mentioned in the mail (from
where to download the client) in the browser of his PDA or smart phone. Then he
can click on the 'Download button' to download the client on to the PDA.
Then the software asks you where to download the client from. One can choose
the location in his phone. But it is better to save in the storage card (if you
have) so that you won't run out of the internal memory of your PDA.
This client requires around 13MB of free space in the PDA's main storage to
get installed. This is a slight drawback because 13MB is a pretty huge space for
a phone's primary storage.
During the installation it asks you to enter the email ID and pin number that
you have received in your inbox from GoodAdmin Also it asks you to enter your
mobile number.
Once the installation is complete, GMM client downloads the services that are
available to you from the GMM server and then restarts your mobile device.
Now your mobile device is completely ready to work; if it has not started
automatically, please restart the GMM service manually on your mobile device.
As soon as the service gets started, your mobile device synchronizes with MS
Exchange for mail, calendar entries, tasks and policies.
For checking its administrative capability we went to the GMM console and
opened the management window of the 'user1'.
Then in policy settings we selected 'custom policy' and then clicked on the
edit policy button. We went to 'Options' tab and disabled Bluetooth, again we
went to the application tab and disabled Windows media player and camera.
As soon as these policies were applied to the user, the mobile device
automatically restarted.
When the mobile device booted it displayed the message showing that your
Bluetooth, media player and camera are disabled.