While the iPhone's place in the business world is an evolving story, Synchronica has added their own chapter by shipping v3.0 of their Mobile Gateway service, adding support for Apple's shiny new phone to synchronize email with Microsoft Exchange. This could allow many a corporate user to finally justify that iPhone purchase to their boss, now that they can both send and receive email on it without needing to install software or being behind a firewall. Speaking of security, messages are sent over encrypted IMAP/SMTP and secure HTTPS connections to the Microsoft Exchange server, so it sounds like things are locked down pretty tightly.

Synchronica's iPhone-enabled service is available now with a 60-day free trial, though the demo signup page explains that the company has apparently been bowled over with requests since announcing iPhone Exchange compatibility. If you're still interested in exploring your chances of getting the boss to add an iPhone to the company's expense account, you can sign up to be notified when normal service resumes and you can get in on the action.

[via PC World]

Weblogs Inc. alumnus and current mobile computing blogging juggernaut Kevin C. Tofel dives into the world of hosted Exchange, explaining what it is and why you might need it. Kevin has long been a mobile computing expert, and currently provides his expertise over at JKOnTheRun with James Kendrick.

Briefly, hosted Exchange is a way to get the benefits of an Exchange server without the headache and overhead of actually having to own and maintain one. Having access to one opens up a number of possibilities with respect to having your data available to you on multiple machines and in multiple ways.

If you're already using some form of Exchange for your mobile computing needs, you might enjoy learning a bit more about how to filter what actually makes it to your mobile device.

Evolution is a Personal Information Management program that has been popular in the Linux world for a few years. It looks startlingly like Microsoft Outlook, and in fact is intended as a replacement for Outlook. Evolution's claim to fame is the ability to connect to an Exchange server with most of the same functionality afforded to Outlook clients. And while I'm not sure how I feel about the blatant rip-off of the user interface, I was okay with it when I figured that it gives Linux users the ability to connect to an Exchange server, create and accept meeting requests, and basically be first-class citizens on their corporate network.

Well, now Evolution has been ported to Windows. Why do I feel differently about it now? I'm not sure. I guess since Microsoft Outlook already exists for Windows, it's hard to justify using a third-party application that replicates Outlook so completely.

The justification given on the Evolution site was that their company needed to be able to schedule meetings with external clients who used Microsoft Outlook as their email client. And rather than purchase Outlook for their staff, they opted to port Evolution to Windows to avoid paying for the software.

Although many publications have called Evolution an "Outlook Replacement", I'm not sure I would be comfortable building a company on what is almost certainly illegal software. Evolution's user interface is so similar to Outlook's that it's either infringing on Microsoft's copyright, or at least some form of intellectual property. I'm no lawyer, but I know in my gut when something feels wrong, and this feels wrong. But it's not for me to pass judgement, and who knows - maybe Microsoft is tacitly allowing Evolution to exist. Anyhow, as a technical achievement, it's remarkable. Even if it is fugly compared to recent versions of Outlook. Hmm, maybe that's why Microsoft doesn't mind?