So you have Exchange 2003, your boss wants mail on his mobile - you look to Blackberry & other similar products for help!

Well I don't - Exchange 2003 SP2 comes with a native built in DirectPush technology called ActiveSync- yes, its true this is primarily supported by the Windows Mobile based pda's out there but you can also get a licensee version of the Active Sync client for many other kinds of mobile device. The favourite by far can be checked out at the following url:

http://www.dataviz.com/solutions/enterprise/roadsync/index.html

Cool, so now you have an idea that you going to use Exchange Active Sync in your environment, the next step is enabling it & setting up your devices... well this is pretty easy provided you have a front-end/back-end topology (if using ssl otherwise this doesnt matter)

All you need to do is open up Exchange System Manager on your management station or one of your Exchange Servers

Expand Global Settings
Right Click Mobile Services & select Properties
Enable Outlook Mobile Access
Enable Unsupported Devices
Setup the Device Security as per your policies

Now Goto Active Directory Users & Computers, right click those users who you are going to be using ActiveSync, select Exchange Tasks> Configure Features > Enable Mobile Services

Finally on the Device itself, connect to the WAP / GPRS, open ActiveSync / RoadSync, Add a new Server (Account), specify the username, the public IP of your OWA site (front end Server), and your netbios domain name & hit next/merge/finish.

Presto - it connects to the server, sets up a partnership & begins downloading the relevant data... Calendar, Contacts & Inbox are but a few of what can be sync'd (dependant on device & exchange version - ) so check it out.