Reliance Info plan offers access to office emails

Reliance Infocomm is offering 'mobile office', which will enable employees to access their office e-mail, office directory on their Reliance IndiaMobile (RIM) handsets.

The company has tied up with 12 corporate houses including Asian Paints and HDFC for the service.

Incidentally, Reliance Application Platform (RAP), on which the product is based, is the first platform from the company's stable sought to be patented. The company has applied for patents in the US and Europe.

Mahesh Prasad, president-applications and solutions group, Reliance Infocomm said, "the mobile office will initially offer three components - office mail, office directory and group communication - to the enterprise. The enterprise with this solution will be able to scale up productivity from its employees."

Reliance intends to add several more applications to this mobile office.

Reliance Infocomm which has been working on this solution for the "past few months" has now perfected "architectural issues" related to the email servers. Prasad claimed that several enterprises have been reluctant to use application earlier a few service providers were replicating mails and there were concerns regarding security.

"We are not replicating the mails at Reliance server. We will be offering total security with supports end to end 128 bit encryption and SSL . Besides enterprises can use applications on internet, leased line or virtual private network," he added.

The data interchange between the handset is covered by enhanced CDMA data network security features. Office mail can communicate data using standard internet data security as well as secured channel access using SSL (secured socket layer) over PoP3/IMAP protocols.

Alternatively, the enterprise could also adopt secured password authentication model with/without SSL/TLS.

"There is no need for additional capex requirement at the enterprise level. Even the application is not limited to certain handsets and there is no need for laptop or PDA phones. The enterprise can avail of this application at a flat monthly subscription rate," Prasad added.