Over at Ed Brill’s place, there’s a link to a video from Sybase showing the iPhone being used to connect to corporate messaging system (Domino or Exchange).
I’ve fallen into this trap lately of being instantly enamored with anything that holds the promise of connecting my Notes email and iPhone. However, even the support team at PocketMac admitted that they’re having trouble understanding and fixing why I can’t sync Notes and the iPhone (I get a number of calendar errors and it apparently takes much longer than it should). The Sybase solution looks like another alternative, but its still not as slick as the MS Exchange demo Apple did a few weeks ago at the iPhone SDK event.
In short, it appears to require a server on your DMZ that acts as a go-between to your device and Domino server. Contacts are delivered via a web page optimized for the iPhone. And some contact information can be pulled from whatever is cached when you’re working off-line (although I’ve noticed that the web pages “blank out” after a period of time, meaning there’s just a white page instead of whatever content was there the last time you accessed the page on the iPhone while connected to a network). But here’s what I found amusing about the video:
If you look closely, you’ll see the battery level is very low. Now, this could simply be that it took the guy A LOT of takes to shoot the video OR it could be a reflection on the battery life needed for the product. Our company used to use Sybase’s iAnywhere product for a variety of smart phone devices and the number one reason we replaced it with GOOD’s product was the effect it had on battery life. I found it funny to see that problem exist on the iPhone video demo.
What people here are saying…