Yes, e-mail-to-SMS/MMS is fairly common in the United States among other places, but it's not common everywhere. For example, it's not available with Singapore's mobile carriers as far as I know. It's not terribly common in Europe either. The RESTful interfaces to SMS/MMS message centers are a better option at this point in time, at least if you're implementing something new, more global, and/or more reliable (fewer hops/intermediaries/gateways). But you might also want to send an e-mail in addition to a carrier text message and/or mobile push message. Or even trigger an automatic voice call.
As another example, Japan really never hopped on the SMS/MMS bandwagon, instead jumping straight to mobile handset-based "full" e-mail clients. So the e-mail path works for them, but there's no e-mail-to-SMS gateway in the loop. By the way, please take advantage of the lovely CICS SupportPac CA1Y, just recently updated: http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg24033197 This SupportPac is provided "as is," but it's a great little kit nonetheless. It equips CICS Transaction Server for z/OS with a very easy-to-consume capability, based on JavaMail, to send e-mails either asynchronously (recommended) or synchronously. Although not tested, the same SupportPac includes functions for CICS programs to *retrieve* e-mails as well, via standard IMAP and POP3 protocols. TLS encryption is supported, you can generate PDF and other attachments -- loads of wonderful stuff there, all at no additional charge to those of you with CICS Transaction Server. If you don't have a CICS Transaction Server license then you can go grab JavaMail from here: https://java.net/projects/javamail/pages/Home and use it right away on z/OS's JVM in other contexts. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Timothy Sipples IT Architect Executive, Industry Solutions, IBM z Systems, AP/GCG/MEA E-Mail: [email protected] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
