Services aimed at giving companies a comprehensive approach to wireless communications
Orange Business this week rolled out its Mobile Office package, a suite of services that the company describes as comprehensive approach for organizations that want to create a more unified wireless communications system.
Orange Business Services this week rolled out its Mobile Office package, a suite of services that the company describes as comprehensive approach for companies that want to create a more unified wireless communications system.
The Mobile Office has four key components, including network client access software that provides a common interface for laptops and PDAs that connect wirelessly to Wi-Fi or 3G networks; mobile device security software that automatically provides the latest security updates to mobile devices; device deployment managed services that handle device software installation and certification; and infrastructure management services that combine an integrated portal interface that helps manage PDAs and laptops with direct help desk support. (Compare wireless products.)
Dan Jackson, Orange’s director of mobile strategies for the Americas, says that a key feature of the product suite is that it gives IT departments a centralized way to manage a wide array of mobile devices in a broad range of geographic locations.
“A lot of customers I’ve talked to don’t have the ability to know what applications their employees are loading onto company laptops,” he says. “They also have difficulty in making sure that their users are utilizing firewalls and antivirus and antispyware programs. This helps them make certain that their devices are compliant with what the company is looking for.”
Orange has two products within its Mobile Office suite designed specifically to provide constant updates to mobile devices. The first one, a piece of software called Secure My Device, places a small software agent that sits on laptops and sends regular reports to company management servers about what hardware and software is being added to the device. Additionally, the agent automatically checks the device to ensure that it has the most updated versions of the company’s security protocols and can ask the server to ship updates if the device isn’t properly protected. The other component within the suite for software updates, Orange’s Mobile E-mail service, performs the same devices management tasks for PDAs as Secure My Device performs for laptops, in addition to providing e-mail directly to PDAs via a POP3 account.
Currently, Jackson says that Secure My Device is only compatible with Windows machines and is not yet available for machines that run on Linux or Mac operating systems. The Mobile E-mail software, meanwhile, is compatible with Palm smart phones, as well as devices that run on Windows Mobile and Symbian operating systems. While Mobile E-mail can be installed on BlackBerry devices “on a case-by-case basis,” Jackson says that Orange has not yet developed a way to install the software into BlackBerry devices on a standardized basis.
“(BlackBerry manufacturer) RIM is not very open and you have to do things in a very particular way with them,” he says. “So therefore, we’re doing it on a case-by-case basis for the time being.”
The other key components of device management in Orange’s new product suite are its device management and certification managed services. Jackson says that as part of the package, Orange will take responsibility for all devices purchased by the company and will install all software, hardware and other services onto the devices to meet the needs of specific end users. Additionally, Orange will take responsibility for either retrieving or for remotely data-wiping the devices in case they are lost or they are being used by an employee who has left the company.
Jackson says that the Mobile Office suite is modular and that customers can pick and choose which features they want to buy. And because Orange doesn’t have the same level of network presence in the United States as carriers such as Verizon and AT&T, he says that customers don’t have to rely on Orange as their exclusive ISP to take advantage of its services.
“We can manage these devices on a variety of networks out there that may or may not be Orange,” he says. “In certain areas we have really good network coverage, but in other areas like in the U.S., we’ve made arrangements with other carriers to get access to Wi-Fi hotspots. So we’re set up to reach across network lines.”
