As PDAs become increasingly powerful and the need to access and store larger amounts of data rises, so does the need to secure that data. When deploying mobile devices and granting users remote access to local network resources, be it email, an intranet site, file shares or specific line of business applications, the administrator needs to know that those devices are doing so securely, will automatically lock themselves if left unattended and can be remotely wiped if they are suspected of being lost or stolen.

In this article I shall look at the foremost products available today, in the author's opinion, as well as the features that should be considered when evaluating a device management solution. If you are interested in knowing more, or have any questions relating to any of the information in this article, call Brightpoint today on 0870 849 0225.

Sybase have announced support for both Android devices and the Apple iPad with the latest version of the Afaria device management product. You can read the press release here - http://www.sybase.com/detail?id=1069199

Afaria is Sybase's device management solution for the Enterprise market, arguably the solution to choose if you need to manage a large fleet of remote devices running a variety of different operating systems and provide mobile integration with back-end line-of-business applications.

I have looked at Afaria in a previous article here - http://blog.brightpointuk.co.uk/sybase-afaria . In this post I shall look at the new features available in version 6.5 of the product.

As PDAs become increasingly powerful and the need to access and store larger amounts of data rises, so does the need to secure that data. When deploying mobile devices and granting users remote access to local network resources, be it email, an intranet site, file shares or specific line of business applications, the administrator needs to know that those devices are doing so securely, will automatically lock themselves if left unattended and can be remotely wiped if they are suspected of being lost or stolen.

The Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) is a standards body responsible for developing and ratifying open standards for the mobile phone industry. OMA-DM is the device management protocol developed by the body for the remote management of mobile phones and PDAs.

The OMA currently manages a number of standards including:

• MMS - Multi-Media Messaging
• WAP - Wireless Application Protocol
• OMA-DS - Open Mobile Alliance - Data Synchronisation
• OMA-CP - Open Mobile Alliance - Client Provisioning
  

Sybase Afaria is 'the daddy' of device management solutions. The scope of this article is to give an overview of the features available. For detailed information on the product, view the product documentation on the FTP site:

ftp://ftpaccess:Brightpoint1@ftp.brightpointuk.co.uk/Sales/Sybase%20Afaria/

Due for release in Q1 2009 is version 6 of the product, which is the version I shall look at in this post.