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.

Excitor (http://www.excitor.com) is a Danish software development company specialising in remote device management and cost control solutions for the enterprise.
The DME Mobile Solution Suite is Excitor's modular framework that provides a feature-rich, multi-platform device management solution combined with state of the art security tools as well as an optional mobile email and PIM manager.

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