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Trends Watch

Enhancing Enterprise Mobility

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

There is a powerful device that stays with your employees 24x7--- their

mobile phones. If one could enable this device to carry business applications,

it could enhance productivity manifold. Mobile phone penetration in the world is

far ahead of broadband penetration. Add better connectivity options like 3G

(whenever it comes to private players in India) and we have a veritable platform

to carry out business activities on the go.

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That's why we're seeing a lot of action in this space, with every mobile

platform vendor enhancing their offerings, and independent software vendors

building innovative solutions around mobility. The range of solutions that are

available today range from software for enhancing individual productivity to

enterprise class solutions that an enterprise can deploy for its entire employee

and customer base. Banks today for instance, are providing different levels of

mobile banking for their customers. Some provide applications that need to be

installed on a smartphone, while others provide WAP based browsing, and yet

others provide SMS based querying, etc.

Architecture of iAnywhere that enables wireless email,

calendar, contacts and task information from Lotus Domino and Microsoft

Exchange to various devices.

Personal productivity apps



At the individual level, there's a plethora of different types of mobile

software for personal productivity. We've given a list of list of these

elsewhere in this story. Among these mobile software, Google's mobile

application stack is fairly well known, which comprises of Google Mail, Picasa,

Google Maps, YouTube, and many others. The best thing about all of these

services is that they're free for anybody to use. You can for instance,

configure your Gmail account to fetch email from your corporate email account

and then access it freely from your phone. So you're not paying any vendor for

email services, only the standard GPRS charges applied by your telecom service

provider apply. Since these services are free, you're on your own if they don't

function or cause things like data loss, crash your phone, etc. That's where the

paid counterparts like BlackBerry, Nokia's latest mobile messaging platform come

in. They charge you hefty fees for uninterrupted services on your mobile phone.

Another one is the Sybase iAnywhere Mobile Office, which enables wireless email,

calendar, contacts and task information from Lotus Domino and Microsoft Exchange

to various devices such as iPhone, Windows Mobile 5/6/6.1/6.5, Nokia S60 3rd and

5th Editions, and Sony Ericsson UIQ 3.0. Its features include ability to

integrate into native applications available on devices, on the fly client

provisioning and deployment and software upgrades, device security with data

encryption, lock down and remote wipe.

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Sybase Afaria

This is an enterprise solution that enables one to

manage mobile devices like PDAs, smartphones, laptops, etc using a browser

based console. It enables one to keep mobile data and devices up-to- date,

reliable and secure. Afaria also has a number of components that perform

critical tasks. This includes the following:

1. Anti-virus and Firewall Manager to secure mobile

devices by conducting scans for malicious content both on-demand and on the

fly. Plus, it can perform inbound and outbound traffic monitoring and data

filtering based on 'Black list' and 'White list', and perform automated call

and message filtering.

2.Backup Manager to automatically backup critical user

data as well as archive its data, applications and hardware configurations

to a centralized location. It can remotely download lost data, applications

and settings to replacement devices.

3.Configuration Manager to ensures that remote devices

and systems are configured properly, required connection settings are

enforced and it also lets one to securely and centrally configure and

maintain system attributes, preferences and settings for remote devices.

4.Document Manager that enables a user to have updated

content on their devices. The synchronization is done intelligently by

updating only the differences in data and not the complete document, thus

optimizing bandwidth.

5.Inventory Management that keeps track of devices and

applications installed on those devices. One can also lock stolen or lost

devices using this component.

6.License Manager that allows one to compare software

usage against software purchases and license agreements.

7.OneTouch which simplifies the process of connecting

to a network, logging in, and completing critical application-related tasks

like security checks, synchronizations and backup.

8.Patch Manager that enables automated patch management

for software residing on mobile devices. For giving remote connection

capabilities to desktop machines from mobile devices.

9.Remote Control that consists of two components: a

client and a console. The former resides on mobile devices, while the latter

is installed on machines to be accessed on the go.

10.Security manager for handhelds and laptops that

provides features such as enforcing power-on password, full disk encryption,

updating signature files and antivirus engines, and managing the

configuration of the device.

11.The last but one component of this series is Session

Manager that uses session-oriented approach, allowing one to automate

business processes and increase in communication efficiency for

intermittently connected devices and systems.

12.Software Manager that makes it easy for your

administrator to centrally distribute, install, maintain and support

frontline applications, no matter where users are located or what kind of

device they're using.

Enterprise mobility apps



Further up are all the enterprise software vendors who can provide field

force automation software for your entire mobile work force. Some of the more

well-known ones are salesforce.com, which provide CRM clients for your mobile

phone. We've also given some success stories on mobile field force automation

solutions elsewhere in this story for your reference.

Besides enterprise apps, mobile databases and management systems are also

there, like Sybase's SQL Anywhere, which is a database management system for

mobiles.

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Enterprise Mobility Solutions



Finally, there are also vendors that provide complete mobile solutions for

an enterprise. The Sybase Unwired Platform is one such example. This includes a

tooling environment that integrates with commonly used integrated development

environments like Visual Studio and Eclipse. This helps in house developers to

develop applications for mobile platforms from an IDE that they're already

familiar with, and then deploy them to different mobile devices and platforms

like Windows Mobile, Windows 32 (laptops/tablets), RIM, etc. This solution

comprises of the Sybase Unwired Server that helps in packaging and deployment of

mobile applications to mobile devices. This server also handles enterprise data

source and application access, communication between back-end and mobile

devices, scheduling, security and transaction processing.

The Sybase Unwired solution also has a Control Center, which is a web based

console for configuring and managing the Unwired Server and its components. The

last component is Sybase Unwired Workspace, which is a development environment

designed for mobile application development, testing, and deployment. Unwired

Workspace is like a plug-in to Eclipse and Visual Studio development

environment.

The architecture of Sybase Unwired Platform. It includes a

tooling environment that integrates with commonly used integrated

development environments like Visual Studio and Eclipse.
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Integration with enterprise business apps



Another common trend being observed is the integration of mobile apps with

enterprise business apps. There are manufacturing companies for instance, that

provide an SMS service for their dealer network. The service integrates with

their ERP back-end, and the dealers could for instance, query about their

shipments, complaints, and much more. All this is done via SMS. The Sybase

platform we just talked of for instance, also allows this sort of integration

with business applications like SAP and other database oriented applications.

One challenge an enterprise is likely to face while developing mobile

applications is their management. Since the data is present on so many mobile

phones, how do you secure it? How do you reach out to different mobile devices,

etc? Can you centrally manage your mobile workforce?

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Useful Apps for Smartphones

Next-Choosing

the Right Mobile Platform

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