The Big Laptop Story

Work from anywhere is becoming increasingly popular in most organizations,

and laptops form an integral part of this move. But which one should you choose?

Should it be a notebook or a netbook? Besides that, how do combat laptop theft?

How do you protect the data on them? On the connectivity front, how good are the

current high-speed connectivity options for your laptop?Find the answers in this

story

The economic slowdown has caused most organizations to look for innovative

ways of improving efficiency, enhancing employee productivity, and saving costs.

Every penny saved matters, and every investment made must have an RoI

justification attached to it, else it doesn't roll with the top management. One

innovative option that organizations need to consider is to enable their

employees to work from anywhere, so as to improve employee productivity. Some

MNCs are already doing this, where they don't have fixed seats assigned for

their staff, especially the ones in marketing. They're all given laptops, which

they can use from anywhere. They're given connectivity, so that they can connect

into the Office Intranet from anywhere. They're given security so that data

can't be stolen or retrieved even if the laptop gets stolen. They're also given

smartphones and Blackberries, so that they're always connected no matter where

they are. So does this kind of a setup work? We have reason to believe it does,

because these are some pretty successful MNCs we're talking about.

In this story, we've looked at enterprise mobility, more from the point of

view of laptops and netbooks. Not only have we reviewed 26 notebooks and

netbooks for you to choose from, but we've also covered many other aspects,

because they are the key enablers of the “work from anywhere' concept. Today,

the trouble is not only in deciding which notebook to buy, or whether it should

be a netbook or notebook. There are other problems as well. What if your laptop

gets stolen? Is there a way to track it down? Even if you can't, is there a way

to ensure that the data on it doesn't get stolen and misused? So in this story,

we've reviewed websites that claim to help you track down your laptop, if it

gets stolen. Plus, we've talked about how to encrypt your hard drive so that

even if your laptop does get stolen, nobody can access your data.

Another key issue is connectivity. Sometimes, the bandwidth available on data

cards is just not sufficient for you to do anything more than check email or

browse some basic websites. High-speed data cards are changing all that, and we

have a story on the trends taking shape in that space.

We've limited our discussions on smartphones this time, because there are

ample things to know in laptops. We'll leave that discussion for another time,

and if you have any thoughts or queries on what we should cover in that space,

then do let us know.

Let's now start by looking at all the key pieces of the mobility puzzle, so

that you can enable a truly mobile enterprise.

Pieces of the mobility puzzle



The next logical question therefore is how can Indian organizations

replicate the 'work from anywhere' model? How can they enable it? In other

words, how can an organization bring in true mobility and derive the benefits

from it?

The answer to that is to identify the pieces of the mobility puzzle. All the

pieces are already available, so you just have to know how to put them together.

The first piece is the device or endpoint, which could either be a laptop or a

smartphone, or both. This would hold your applications and all the data. Next is

connectivity so that the person can remain connected from anywhere. This

comprises of both data and voice connectivity. Third is security, for both the

device and data. Fourth are the back-end applications that the employee would

access.

Notebooks, netbooks or smartphones?



Which laptop should you purchase continues to haunt most decision makers, and
with the onslaught of the latest netbooks, this confusion has increased even

more. We have a separate story on how to choose the right notebook or netbook.

Smartphones continue to remain a personal device, and most organizations tend to

allow their employees to bring their own. If you really want to deploy a

mobility solution, either you need applications that can work on any smartphone,

or you need to standardize on one. A third option is a custom endpoint meant for

a specific application. You need to make the choice depending upon your

application. A private financial institute we know of that provides financing in

rural markets has handed out Linux based portable terminals to its field force.

They carry these along to collect monthly EMIs and generating receipts on the

spot. The data entered in these devices is updated at the central office over

wireless connectivity.

The mobile CRM application represents various information and reports in an intuitive graphical display, which is optimized for small mobile screens.

Which high speed data card?



On the connectivity front, high-speed broadband on the move is slowly

becoming a reality, thanks to all the high-speed data cards that have been

launched by various service providers. Moreover, when 3G comes into play,

connectivity won't remain an issue at all. So now, you need to decide which data

card to buy, whether you should wait for 3G, etc. Not only that, but

organizations are enabling other mobility solutions from this connectivity.

Another bank we know of, who handles micro-financing in remote rural areas has

deployed a mobile van with banking facilities. These mobile vans go on

designated days to the remote villages so that the people from there don't have

to come all the way to the bank to do their transactions. These vans are also

linked to the central office over wireless. So connectivity is not only required

for individuals, but it can also be leveraged for other enterprise mobility

solutions as well.

Data security on the move



The third issue is security. What if your laptop or smartphone gets stolen?

What if somebody mis-uses the data on it? According to a recent survey conducted

by PCQuest on information security, the biggest security incident that most

organizations have suffered from is laptop theft. Of the 90 CIOs who responded

to this survey, nearly 40% had suffered from laptop theft. Here, it's obviously

not the cost of the laptop that's important, but rather the cost of data that's

on it. And the higher up the laptop owner in the organizational value chain, the

more valuable is the data. So besides buying laptops for employees, the bigger

worry for most organizations is protecting the data on them.

In the same information security survey, we found that the priority for a

majority of respondents was safety of data. So, 50% of them had plans to deploy

some sort of a data loss prevention solution, while another 40% wanted to deploy

hard disk encryption so that even if a machine does get stolen, the data remains

safe from prying eyes.

Which applications for my industry?



The fourth and last piece of the puzzle are the applications. Today, there's

a plethora of mobility applications and devices already available.

Salesforce.com for instance, has a mobile CRM solution, which allows the sales

staff to access the CRM application from their mobile phones. Similarly,

Motorola has a handheld computer that can be put to several interesting uses.

Both of these have been covered in this story.

SalesForce.com CRM Mobile



Salesforce.com provides a mobile offering to their customers with instant access
from anywhere, through the Salesforce Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

application. This mobile offering is available for iPhone, BlackBerry, and

Windows Mobile-based devices. Thus a sales personnel now does not have to be

hooked to a desktop or a laptop to access a customer's information. He can have

all the information he needs on his smartphone through the Salesforce Mobile CRM

application.

CRM on the Go



Salesforce.com offers four types of licenses for its mobile CRM solution, namely
group, professional, enterprise and unlimited. The mobile offering is available

for all licenses except for customers having a group license. The offering is in

two versions: Lite and Professional. The professional version comes as an

additional subscription fee and has full-blown features, while the Mobile Lite

offers customers with basic access to most common Salesforce CRM features.

The Mobile CRM is offered as a downloadable application that can be installed

on BlackBerry, iPhone or Windows Mobile based smartphones. Keeping in view that

most Nokia smartphones are Symbian based and Nokia has a significant market

share in India, the absence of support for Symbian smartphone can be a drawback

for Salesforce in the Indian context. Providing a lighter and free version of

the mobile application from Salesforce.com could be good for those customers who

are apprehensive about paying additional money for this mobile offering, but by

finding mobile access beneficial, they would consider to upgrade to paid

subscription with the passage of time.

Features



The mobile application once installed on the smartphone connects to the
Salesforce.com CRM service cloud over the GPRS. The user can login and get

connected to the CRM server to access information. In the absence of any

connectivity, the application can work in offline mode as well. Frequently

queried and recently accessed information is stored in the device as cache,

providing the user access to information in the offline mode. The mobile

application meant for professional edition provides all the features that the

web interface allows, only that the mobile interface has been optimized to fit

smaller screens.

The Mobile Lite service allows end users to log calls and emails, update

activities and tasks as well as view account and contact details, leads,

opportunities, cases, solutions, assets, and dashboards, all from their mobile

device.

The administrator of the organization's CRM has the authority to define

access rights for different users. The VP-Sales will have access to all sorts of

reports while the front-line sales executive will have access to information and

reports of his customers only. The application also shows the KPI reports as

graphics. The application allows mobile workers to instantly access critical

customer information, update tasks and event-based information, check details of

next call, and they can also pull up a map of their next appointment. A typical

user can set his dashboard view for mobile application from the web browser.

Thus, CRM users can review cases and search for information and files in their

daily activity reports from a smartphone, which they would otherwisehave done by

accessing their PC.

Next :



Combating Mobile Security