The function of EMO is easy to understand. The application simply automatically forwards any e-mail that reaches the office inbox straight to the phone, as well as any changes made to the personal calendar.

The solution is mainly targeted at small- and medium-sized enterprises and this is also where the biggest business opportunities are found. In Europe, 82 percent of these belong to that category.

EMO immediately attracted substantial attention when it was launched on December 1 at the Ericsson Mobile Internet Forum in Zurich, Switzerland. David Ekberg, director for mobile data solutions at Ericsson Enterprise, says he talked to most of the 30 operators at the event about EMO and the feedback was even better than he
had expected.

"One big European operator got so enthusiastic that he immediately started business discussions to get it," Ekberg says. "And several operators that are using other solutions today said they would now consider going for our solution. They want something that doesn't require a certain terminal for e-mail, but can be used with standard phones."

Today, EMO works with most Smartphones and PDAs that use Symbian and Windows CE operating systems. The mail programs supported are Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes. The advantage, compared to present synchronization solutions, is that users do not have to wait for e-mails to be transferred as this is done automatically and in the background. This gives a much more user-friendly experience.

Mats Dahlin, head of Ericsson Enterprise, has been one of the high-demand test users who have been evaluating the product. "Since I got EMO, I couldn't do without it," he says. "My e-mail is always updated, and so am I - even if I'm out traveling. It's just perfect for me."

Both operators and enterprises gain from the solution. Several studies show that making e-mail and other office applications mobile raises efficiency at work. According to a recent study by consulting firm A.T. Kearney, mobile access to corporate data, such as mail, calendar and data network, can increase employee productivity as much as 30 percent.

For operators, the opportunities are even better. According to industry analysis firm ARC Group, mobile revenues from e-mail and personal information management functions (PIM), such as calendars, will amount to USD 650 million this year, and increase 13-fold in five years.

"We suggest that operators bundle the push-mail function, phone and subscription into customer packages that can be bought off the shelf," Ekberg says. "Preferably, EMO should work when the customer exits the store."

The solution comes in three editions, all with the same functions. The Internet Edition is for enterprises with a hosted e-mail service. The Professional Edition is a personal e-mail agent that is installed into laptops for quick and easy deployment. The Enterprise Edition is server based and is mainly targeted at medium-sized enterprises. It is installed and integrated with the enterprise's mail server.

EMO is an important part of Ericsson Enterprise's mobile-data offering. Another product, also recently launched, is Corporate Access. It enables secure wireline and wireless connections to a company's local network and seamless handover between GPRS, LAN, 3G, WLAN and EDGE.

"The Corporate Access solution requires a certain technical level in the network to give a good user experience," Ekberg says. "But in five years' time, I don’t think it will never mind where we are with our laptops. We just switch it on and connect to the corporate network - and we won't care if it is via WLAN or 3G or any other technique."

Read more on Ericsson's enterprise solutions here. http://www.ericsson.com/enterprise

Read more on the Ericsson Mobile Application Awards here.