New Technology Reviews!.: Mobility

Motorola Mobility to split from parent company

<img src="http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/classifications/gadgets/phones/mobile-phones/images/motorola-logo-200-200.jpg"> Motorola's <a href="http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/motorola-to-split-into-two-razr-blamed-279341">split of the company</A> into two separate entities will happen soon, creating Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions. The stocks will be split up, with those owning shares in Motorola Inc getting one share of Motorola Mobility and the rest in the Motorola Solutions. Motorola will then effect a 1-for-7 reverse stock split of Motorola common stock, which means for every seven shares of Motorola held, you'll receive one share in Motorola Solutions instead. Dealing in fractions Fractional shares will be aggregated and sold off by brokers, with owners receiving cash from the sale. The change will come into effect ahead of the markets opening on 4 January, with recorded stockholders from 21 December subject to the split. Essentially it means that when we speak about Motorola from now on, we'll mean the phone and set-top box maker - we just want to know when the Android tablet is coming, to be honest.

Motorola Mobility to split from parent company

Motorola's split of the company into two separate entities will happen soon, creating Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions. The sto...

Future of Business Mobility in Australia: What Lies Ahead?

With mobile penetration exceeding 100% of Australia's population, the mobile phone is now undeniably part of the fabric of our lives. In business, mobile data has become the latest frontier for companies seeking greater responsiveness in the face of rising competition and customer expectations. For many organisations, geographical expansion and the continual search for a better work/life balance for their employees also mean increasing numbers of workers are spending more time outside the office and relying more on wireless technology to stay connected.The first major milestone in Australian business mobility came when Telstra unveiled the BlackBerry wireless email solution in 2003. Since then, the other three mobile carriers along with a host of other wireless email solutions have flooded the market with choice and greater affordability. More than three years after its first debut, wireless email has now become the most popular business application being mobilised by Australian organisations.As the mobile carriers continue to roll out higher-speed networks and mobile applications become more commonplace, the market is experiencing another significant milestone, where Australian companies are beginning to mobilise business process centric applications in a major way. Notable applications include customer relationship management (CRM) for sales and marketing personnel, workforce automation and inventory management for workers in the field, and industry-specific applications such as mobile transactions, location services and assets tracking. ChallengesThe rapid growth in mobile business applications does not come without challenges, however. The additional data traffic mobile workers generate and their growing needs for a better user experience are putting considerable strains on the corporate network. As a result, companies with a growing mobile workforce are encountering the formidable task of ensuring their corporate infrastructure and business support systems can accommodate the change.Technical issues organisations are likely to face include:§	Network Readiness. More mobile workers accessing company data mean increases in traffic on the corporate network. Access to bandwidth-hungry business applications, as well as real-time and multi-modal communications, such as voice and video conferencing, makes network scalability and quality of service a critical consideration.§	Remote Access and Security. As with wired remote access users, mobile workers using a wireless connection increase the risk of the corporate network being exposed to unauthorised users. Increasing numbers of viruses and malicious codes are also making their way to the mobile world. §	Wireless Standards. Despite its rapid developments, the wireless industry remains a highly fragmented market in terms of standards, with many incompatible - and proprietary - technologies each offering its own unique advantages. The large number of mobile device choices and operating systems available on the market today only serves to exacerbate the situation.§	Mobile Device Management. Mobile devices used in an organisation, either centrally or individually purchased, tap into the company's network and databases, and must therefore be properly monitored and managed. Unmanaged mobile devices can bring serious security risks (viruses and hacking) to the organisation, as can the misplacement and theft of those devices.§	Back-end Integration. Given the variety of back-end systems in an enterprise, it is crucial that mobile solutions integrate seamlessly with the existing infrastructure. Companies also have to ensure their applications are ready to meet the needs of mobile workers and the specific requirements of the mobile devices they use without substantial modifications to the databases or applications being mobilised.On the business front, companies are facing the following challenges:§	Cost Control. Implementing mobile solutions invariably involves for both upfront and ongoing costs. Obtaining accurate estimates of total cost of ownership can be difficult. In addition, businesses will need to take into consideration the cost of wireless connectivity which can be significant, particularly when there are no centralised subscription plans.§	ROI Justification. Justification of the benefits, especially intangible or "soft" benefits like improved workforce productivity and business efficiency, can be difficult to quantify, and can vary greatly among the various types of mobile users. At times, companies may have to justify the lack of a demonstrable ROI instead.§	Training and Support. The resources to support the mobile solution being put in place are as important as the solution itself. User training must take into account the existing knowledge and offer ongoing formal and informal training programs. The IT department's buy-in on technical support and user training forms a key part of a successful mobility strategy.Convergence and mobilityMany Australian businesses are merging their voice and data communications onto one platform. That move, made possible by Internet protocol (IP) technology, is also allowing them to amalgamate traditionally disparate telecom and IT networks, simplifying the procurement and administration of technologies and greatly reducing costs.With IP as the common enabler of the technology roadmaps of businesses and carriers alike, convergence is also blurring the demarcation between private and public networks. Since IP is at the heart of wireless radio and mobile device developments, it is natural for businesses to leverage their IP infrastructure and integrate mobility as part of their convergence strategy. In other words, IP is also melding wireless and wireline technologies, thus playing an instrumental role in helping organisations achieve advanced stages of mobility deployment.Given mobility technology will become an inextricable element of the corporate IT infrastructure, future challenges will likely become even more complex. Therefore, it is critical that decision makers adequately address the early challenges raised here, or they will miss the opportunity to realise the full benefits of mobility and risk falling behind competition.	 	 		 			 				 					 						About the AuthorWarren Chaisatien is the Managing Director of <a href="http://www.telsyte.com.au" target="_new">http://www.telsyte.com.au</a> an Australian-based market research and consultancy specialised in the competitive intelligence of the converged communications market. Telsyte?s expertise is centered around the three core competency areas of Carrier & Broadband, Mobile & Wireless, and Enterprise Communications. Telsyte provides industry insights through custom research and consulting as well as ongoing research, including market reports and online databases.

Future of Business Mobility in Australia: What Lies Ahead?

With mobile penetration exceeding 100% of Australia's population, the mobile phone is now undeniably part of the fabric of our lives....

Controlling Enterprise Mobility in the Cloud

According to a recent Gartner survey, as reported by InfoWorld, Cloud Computing was mentioned as one of the top two technology priorities for CIOs in 2010. What's also interesting is that on the Top 10 list is also security technologies.The concept of cloud computing is not new. The economic viability of this model is quite compelling for many enterprises, with the Gartner survey also mentioning cost reduction and improved workforce effectiveness as two of the top 10 CIO business priorities. However, concerns around security and relinquishing control over sensitive corporate data have been stalling the widespread adoption of cloud computing in the last couple of years. But, becoming clear is that the cloud computing era is approaching fast. And here's why.Past experience has taught us that economic viability is a strong driver for innovation, and that drive will prevail over technical challenges. One example is the shift from mainframe computing paradigm, which dominated the marketplace in the 80s, to the client-server paradigm, which prevailed in the 90s. The mainframe generation was characterized by silos of data and voice communications. In this generation, dumb terminals used to connect to proprietary mainframes for specific yet limited computing applications, with voice, video and data running on completely segregated networks. The mainframe paradigm was simple and secure, with enterprises being fully in control of access privileges to data and applications.However, the economic benefits of unifying voice, video, and data applications on a single converged network became a stronger, more prevailing force. Continuing this example, the client-server paradigm galvanized the adoption of TCP/IP worldwide, which in turn spurred the development of the internet and unified communications.These same concepts are applicable to the cloud computing industry. The economic viability of pay-as-you-go for virtually unlimited elastic computing resources, required for fast and efficient implementation of IT projects, will overcome the security concerns. The fact that existing cloud computing vendors are prospering and that major new players are entering the cloud computing market, is yet another indication that this industry is beginning to emerge successfully across the chasm.This market growth is an indication that the adoption of the technology is shifting from the early adaptors, who are visionary in nature, to the pragmatic early majority. There is ample evidence that cloud computing is gaining momentum. Amazon is substantially growing their Elastic Compute Cloud and S3 services and a stock price appreciating over 175% from January 2009; Google Apps Engine is challenging the Microsoft domination of the office applications, and Salesforce-dot-com's stock price is appreciating over 180% in the last year, There are also new major players who are entering this market, including IBM with Blue Cloud and AT&T with Synaptic Hosting, and the expectation is that other major Service Providers will be adding cloud services to their portfolio in 2010.Independent of whether your corporation is an early adaptor or an early majority company, if you will be adopting cloud computing technologies in the foreseeable future, then an interesting question to ponder would be: "How would the adoption of cloud computing and SaaS applications impact the enforcement of corporate security policies for mobile users?"The traditional approach to enforcing corporate access security is to require mobile users accessing the corporate LAN to launch either SSL VPN or IPSec VPN clients. With these technologies, tunnels are established at the application or network layer respectively to ensure confidentiality of data traversing these VPNs. The challenge of this approach is that mobile workers who use their corporate remote access devices to access the internet either don't launch their VPN clients, or their sessions are routed directly to internet through a split tunnel connection provisioned on access routers.When remote users are accessing the corporate LAN through VPN, they are protected by firewalls with UTM (Unified Threat Management) functionality. This is not the case, however, when the users connect directly to the Internet. In this case, they are exposed to a multitude of risks, including viruses, phishing, and spyware.A practical example of this risk would be the following scenario. Consider that you are using your corporate laptop to log from your home into the Dolphin Stadium and the Miami Dolphins team website to purchase tickets for the 2010 Super Bowl football game. What you don't know is that this web site has been hacked into (based on a real scenario*), and it downloads and installs a malicious code on your laptop. This code acts as Trojan and can install a keylogger code and disable the anti-virus application on your laptop. After purchasing your tickets to the Super Bowl, you decide it's time to get some work done and log into your Google Apps. Unfortunately, your password to Google Apps is captured by the keylogger and compromised at that time. This scenario could have been avoided with a mobile connection manager blocking the remote access to Google Apps after detecting that the Antivirus application is disabled.As the control point in the cloud computing era is shifting from VPN to internet connection, the connection manager will be required to enforce corporate policies for endpoint security. The recently announced iPass Open Mobile Platform has been designed with this paradigm shift in mind. The Open Mobile Client is always running on the mobile device, which enables it to become the ultimate control point for all mobility purposes, regardless of whether the accessed applications reside in the cloud or on the corporate LAN.The client in most cases is transparent to the end users, enforcing policies in the background. Policies may include optimal network selection, launching and passing on user credentials to VPN clients, and performing end-point integrity checks and remediation. The ECA (Event Condition Action) functionality on the Open Mobile Client empowers IT administrators to enforce corporate endpoint security policies. ECA is used to enforce both pre- and post-connect policies and spans across all integrated technologies (e.g. VPNs) and application (e.g. UTM apps running on the mobile device).*Based on a real hacking scenario, please refer to the PC World website for the article "Super Bowl Related Websites Hacked." or <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/128750/super_bowlrelated_web_sites_hacked.html" rel="nofollow" target="_new">http://www.pcworld.com/article/128750/super_bowlrelated_web_sites_hacked.html</a>.	 	 		 			 				 					 						By Michael Segal, iPass. iPass Inc. helps enterprises and individuals unify the management of remote and mobile connectivity. With iPass software and services, enterprise customers can create easy-to-use wireless and broadband solutions for their mobile workers, home offices, and branch and retail locations, complete with web-based management, security validation, and unified billing. Visit us at <a href="http://www.ipass.com" target="_new">http://www.ipass.com</a>, or blog at: <a href="http://www3.ipass.com/blog" target="_new">http://www3.ipass.com/blog</a> or find a hotspot at: ipass.jiwire.com

Controlling Enterprise Mobility in the Cloud

According to a recent Gartner survey, as reported by InfoWorld, Cloud Computing was mentioned as one of the top two technology priorities...