Rhombus IM Mobile Technology
We are pleased to announce the general availability of our new mobile technology platform. The Rhombus IM Mobile Platform will allow you to extend your company's instant messaging infrastructure to handheld devices. If you're interested in working with us to certify our client on the devices you use, please contact us!
Mobile Architecture
The Rhombus IM mobile solution is unique, because our architecture is designed for the realities of today's mobile networks. Spotty coverage, poor screen real estate, low-bandwidth slow connections are the experiences of today's wireless user. We use this stuff too, and we know that most of the mobile offerings from the phone companies just don't work well.
Other mobile offerings look complete, but they don't really work with today's mobile devices. They need a full TCP/IP stack and make a full connection to your IM server. If you briefly go out of coverage, the connection gets broken.
The Rhombus IM mobile solution does not use this model. It uses standard HTTP, so that it works reliably on common GPRS and WAP networks. It does not require a special Blackberry Enterprise Server or any similar technology.
With Rhombus IM, you deploy a simple web server as your Rhombus IM Mobile Gateway. Clients connect through this gateway and gain access to your internal Rhombus IM infrastructure. Even if your Rhombus IM installation is not accessible to the outside, you can safely deploy a mobile gateway with SSL and avoid exposing your valuable IM network to the Internet.
Target Devices
The mobile arena is very exciting because it is an untapped, diverse marketplace. However, Java has emerged as a clear leader to unify the various handheld platforms with a single set of technology that truly runs everywhere.
In light of this, our initial Rhombus IM Mobile offering is designed for Java MIDP 1.0 compliant devices. Most phones designed in the past 2 years offer support for Java technology. This includes Nokia, Siemens, Ericsson and Motorola phones as well as PalmOS devices and Blackberry handhelds. The PalmOS and Blackberry client software offers a highly usable platform for IM due to the ease of text entry.
The PocketPC platform by Microsoft is the natural outlier, and it is the only major platform that the Rhombus IM technology will not support in the initial release.
Pricing and Availability
Our mobile technology platform is now shipping and is priced affordably per account activated for mobile access. Complete pricing details can be found on our pricing chart. To purchase the mobile gateway, please contact our sales department for a quote.