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I know I have been raiding Smartphonethoughts lately but this is good news and needs to be propagated.

MailShadowG, the newest offering from Cemaphore Systems, will revolutionize the way you think about email continuity and content management. Using a SaaS-based (Software as a Service) model, MailShadowG allows you to synchronize your Outlook client with web-based email service providers like Google’s Gmail. This effectively turns Outlook into a universal front end client for different email systems, reducing infrastructure costs dramatically and making email backup portable and affordable. MailShadowG severs your dependency on the costliest elements of a traditional Exchange backup system.

Sounds cool. No doubt this convergent system could be really handy. I am sure the problem has been encountered by many in the tech industry (use Exchange for work-life, Google for personal life). I know I do.

This system could eliminate the need for individual 3rd party apps for each individual service. In general it looks good. However it looks like Outlook on the PC becomes the conduit so I am wondering where mobile syncing fits into this scheme. Mobile synchronization is key and would be necessary. Currently OggSync offers a similar solution but it also has a mobile-based solution too (I have only tried OggSync’s google calendar sync, but really like it).

I wonder if MailShadowG has a similar option or maybe you would have to set some kind of scheduled synchronization, for those times when you are away from your machine, or maybe they have already thought of this and its worked in to the details. I couldn’t immediately tell from the webpage but I will keep searching.

My only other questions or concerns really have to do with corporate adoption of it and, well, consumer adoption.

What I mean is, the Infrastructures I have seen lately would probably respond to this software offering like this:

"Um, yeah. That’s a security breach. We don’t want you downloading your personal attachments on your work computer or uploading your work calendar info to some other remote system. No deal, sporto". I’m just kidding and being dramatic… what I mean is, while personal email can’t really be stopped in the workplace, I wonder how many Exchange engineers are going to jump on the bandwagon, authorizing  the client software they manage to synchronize data outside of their infrastructure and therefore outside of their control. My hope is that they would all say "HELL YEAH". I bet there could be some traction.

The other thing is that even though I have to use multiple 3rd party apps, right now, sometimes I think I like keeping my worlds separate. I dunno, ultimately I am lazy and would probably want the easiest, most seamless method. I’m not sad about admitting laziness though. On the contrary, laziness can be a great motivator for innovation :) If you get tired enough of doing something the hard way, you figure out a better way.

Jay Donovan (50 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook