Nokia Pushes Enterprise E-Mail Out The Door.

Nokia says it's going to drop out of the "behind the firewall" enterprise mobility business - primarily enterprise push e-mail - instead selling its handsets in conjunction with Cisco, IBM and Microsoft offerings.

It's also in the "advanced stages" of negotiations to sell its security appliance business.

In a statement, Nokia said that it "plans to cease developing or marketing its own behind-the-firewall business mobility solutions." It didn't give any exact timing for the wind-down of its own enterprise mobility software efforts. The e-mail decision appears to mean Nokia simply is going to shut down its "Intellisync" business, for which it paid a handsome $430 million fewer than three years ago (TelecomWeb news break, Feb. 10, 2006). It had hoped that Intellisync would position it to complete with the likes of Research in Motion (RIM). Instead, it found itself competing (and losing) against some of the biggest names in the enterprise market, those with which it's now busy forging alliances.

Nokia also didn't give any indication it might try to sell any part of the Intellisync line in order to recoup part of its investment. Intellisync's products when it bought the company included push e-mail, device/systems management, mobile-application deployment, integrated messaging, data/file synchronization and mobile security functions. Those offerings were interfaced with the Nokia Business Center suite of collaborative business applications. Now, the company says, "the appropriate technologies and expertise will be reallocated to Nokia's new consumer push e-mail service" (called Ovi and currently in beta) and the rest will apparently fade away. It wasn't clear if any staff reductions are involved.

Today's action may actually strengthen Nokia's hand in enterprise mobility because it had been both a partner and competitor to the major market entrants on the software side of the business. Now it will be a partner only, a status the company believes will lead to enhanced sales of its handsets in the enterprise market. As an example, it points to the support of Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync on dozens of its handsets, including some of its latest smartphones.

"We have very strong relationships with industry leading enterprise ...