With a new website and rebranded products, 2010 is proving to be a busy year so far. But let’s not stop there.
Next in line is Outlook Mobile Service.
With the forthcoming release from Microsoft of Outlook 2010 they have made some enhancements to the SMS side of the product.
Naturally we’ve included the functionality into our service, had it checked, and approved by Microsoft. I think we are the 3rd company in the world this time to get approval, (note to self, must be first next time).
So the improvements are thus:
- Support for concatenated SMS (long SMS).
- Outlook 2010 will have an object model available to developers allowing them to build applications on top of it.
- SMS functionality is extended to the alert feature in Sharepoint.
- There is now batch mode to help with Bulk SMS. In short, it will improve the speed of delivery of multiple SMS.
Admittedly they haven’t gone as far as we would have liked. We’d still like to see functionality to customize the originator from within Outlook, and perhaps a direct link to purchase more messages from your chosen SMS provider. The idea being that these improvements alone would mean users could manage most of the SMS aspects directly from Outlook without having to log into the web front end of the SMS provider.
For now Outlook 2010 is another giant leap in the right direction for PC originated SMS. Our customers who have adopted Outlook Mobile Service in version 2007 find the efficiency of sending SMS from their email software much more convenient than signing into a web application. We should see 2010 build on that convenience.
