The person installing MSD will need to have Designer or Manager access to the directory on the Domino server and be familiar with creating foreign domain documents. I have taken system administration classes that certainly helped me complete the installation, but you don't have to be an absolute administrative whiz to get this product up and running.

The price
At a cost of $3,999, Mobile Services for Domino is not for casual users or companies that don't have very many wireless devices in their organization. There is also an additional Client Access License of $20 for users with Wireless Domino Access. The real power of Mobile Services for Domino is unleashing it in a mid- to large-scale production environment where you can control everyone's wireless usage, especially how many characters they are sending to their devices. This is where Mobile Services for Domino could represent a significant cost-savings for your company and make it well worth its fairly substantial price.

Caveats
The setup for Mobile Services for Domino isn't overly complicated, but don't underestimate it. There's a quick start guide you can use to help you get up and running, but I did find some errors that made it a little confusing. Hopefully these will be corrected in MSD 1.1. My advice is to read the MSD Administrator's guide as well. This will help ensure you understand the product completely and help you avoid mistakes. Once I became familiar with the installation process of MSD 1.0, it took me less than 30 minutes to install and configure it properly.

When I tried to look at the product more critically, I came up with two main complaints. These are the lack of a trial version and the high cost. I would love to see a trial version of this product in the future, and I know that Lotus can sell a lot more copies if more people have an opportunity to play with it. Once you use it, you'll have a hard time giving it up. The high cost seems prohibitive to smaller companies that don't have a lot of money and/or don't have very many devices. Larger companies, however, should have no trouble affording it.

The future
Mobile Services for Domino is just going to continue to get more useful in future releases. MSD 1.1, which is mainly a maintenance release, is scheduled for around June, and MSD 2.0 is scheduled for later in the year. Be sure to stay tuned to DominoPower for more about these products.

If you want more conjecture about the future of MSD and some insight into how other companies are making use of this powerful tool, there's an article in SearchDomino you can check out at http://www.searchdomino.com/searchDomino_Original_Content_Item/0,1410,201681,00.html.

Conclusion
If you are a mid- to large-size company, I don't think it's a matter of if you should buy Mobile Services for Domino, but when. With all the new products coming out, such as MobileNotes, there's going to be a lot more demand from users for the ability to access their Domino information wirelessly. For you as a developer or administrator, it's inevitable that you're probably going to have to learn the ins and outs of wireless Domino data, so why not make it sooner rather than later?

Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.

Senior Technical Editor Dan Velasco is a Web Developer at IDG Global Communications in San Mateo, CA. He is also an R4 and R5 CLP Principal Application Developer and an R5 CLP System Administrator and an R4 Principal System Administrator. You can reach him via email at dan_velasco@idg.com or on the Web at http://dan.velasco.com.