Communications

Feature:

Cut the ties

26 September 2005

The efficiency and flexibility that a correctly deployed mobile strategy can bring cannot be ignored.

Organisations across verticals are investing in mobile technologies in the knowledge that they will soon pay for themselves in extra productivity.

This trend is backed up by the latest figures from Microsoft, which show that their Mobile and Embedded Devices division grew by 31 per cent in the third quarter of last year. There are now 380,000 active Windows Mobile developers and more than 18,000 Windows applications.

The challenge for developers in the past has been how to put the applications available on a desktop or laptop PC on to a device small enough to fit in your pocket and still have form factors for it to be practical ? as soon as you put a qwerty keyboard on to a mobile phone, for instance, it becomes clumsy to use as a speech device.

The answer has been to develop a range of devices so that people can use the most suitable for their circumstances. Shaun Orpen from Orange Business Solutions expands on this on page 58.

However, these devices are all tied together with Exchange Server 2003 and Windows Mobile software. Windows Mobile extends the familiar interface to mobile devices and Exchange Server 2003 enables real-time wireless synchronisation across devices.

Exchange Server 2003 has replaced the discontinued Mobile Information Server by delivering additional Microsoft Windows Mobile-based device support, Microsoft Office Outlook Web Access, and Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 mobile features.

This series of articles looks at some of the wider uses of and issues surrounding mobile technology, including the use of m-payments, the importance of collaboration between software companies and mobile companies, the security implications of mobility and how wireless networks and Tablet PCs are improving healthcare.

 

Cash, card or phone? You finish packing your groceries into bags ready to carry them out into the car. "That comes to ?22.45," says the check-out assistant. "Would you like to pay by cash, credit card or mobile phone?"

The vision of the mobile phone as a virtual wallet is the latest metamorphosis of a device whose original function was to enable simple communication between two people. It has since become a games machine, an Internet point, a camera, an organiser, a radio and mp3 player.

At the moment, m-payments are restricted to the micro-payments sector, for services under ?5. By far the most popular method is the reverse SMS, where a series of premium rate SMS messages are sent to the user up to the value of the service received, which at the moment is typically a ring-tone or screen saver.

However, this method is limited because each SMS is for a fixed amount, making it unsuitable for general or large payments.

A report by consultants Arthur D Little says that global m-payment transaction revenues are set to increase from US$3.2bn (?2.5bn) in 2003 to US$37.1bn by 2008. But there will need to be significant standardisation before it can be regarded as a trule alternative to cash, credit cards and cheques.

Matthes Derdack, managing director of the Derdack mobile software solutions company, says that the technology is there and that the network operators should get together so that a full m-payments movement can take place. "I know that there have been a lot of initiatives in Germany for a national standard and they have all failed," he says. "The technology companies are driving it to look for new revenue streams. If they can convince the network operators that there are revenues to be made out of m-payments, then maybe they will go along with it and introduce the required billing infrastructure."

Network providers' expertise in both billing and pay-as-you-go services would apparently make them ideal players in developing a twin credit and pre-pay format over a mobile phone.

Susie Lonie, senior product manager for Vodafone's commercial partnerships division, says that ? for micropayments at least ? the mobile phone account is an ideal billing mechanism. "In macropayments, the industry may see a time when a handset may get used in a similar way to a credit card, allowing charges to be put on your issuing bank account," she says. "However for this to happen, this will involve significant cooperation between telcos, financial institutions and, potentially, handset manufacturers. Structural changes to how credit card accounts are administered would also be needed. Security and 'ownership of the customer' are complex issues that would face both industries."

This would also require significant regulatory input. "Network operators seeking to offer m-payment services are seeking clarification as to whether they would be defined as e-money issuers or payment service providers by regulatory bodies such as the FSA," says Sandra Quinn, a spokesman for the UK Association of Payment Clearing Services (Apacs).

It appears that the technology is there to make m-payments a credible payment channel and there could be significant revenue streams to be made. However, it will require a large degree of cooperation between the interested parties, and that is only likely to happen if the returns are significant, obvious and immediate.

"The position of the payments industry to m-payments is understandably mixed. On the one hand there is a widely-held perception that m-payments have the potential to become a significant new payments channel, and a number of technological approaches appear credible. On the other hand, the business risks are also significant and the challenge is more complex than at first appears," says Quinn.

 

Keep it short and simple

Of all the mobile technologies that are on offer in the market place, SMS may not seem the most exciting.

But the simplicity and familiarity of the service allows for some reliable solutions to be created.

Derdack has been providing SMS and MMS messaging software for mobile operators since 1996 and now builds alerting solutions for the wider business community.

Belgian telecom company Proximus ? which also markets Derdack Message Master XSP software to its own corporate clients ? deployed the solution to its maintenance staff servicing its network of pylons, antennae and transmission masts across Belgium.

Proximus Network Operations' Guy Van Landeghem, who was involved in the development of the system, says: "For on-site interventions, the technicians had to check a set of 16 alarms. Previously, this meant calling our maintenance centre. They can now manage the whole process via SMS."

Upon leaving the site, the technician sends a final SMS and if he has forgotten to close a door or reset one of the modules, he gets a return SMS. "This procedure reduces the error rate to zero," says Van Landeghem. "The SMS messages are processed automatically, and the log of the work done is also maintained by the system.

 

Free to roam Headline-grabbing mobility solutions are usually about the ability to access a corporate network and work from anywhere in the world. But organisations are also using them inside their bricks and mortar.

If staff are to work effectively together they need to be able to meet face to face to discuss ideas and concepts. "Roaming" computing involves wireless local area networks or allowing people to access their applications and data from any machine in the building.

Eric Voskuil, CTO at DesktopStandard, a desktop management company, says: "Users are freely moving between computers at various locations. These scenarios cause a number of configuration management problems, in contrast to the time when one user used just one computer and that computer didn't move. Now configurations must dynamically adapt to the environment. Just as you change clothes as the seasons change, a computer must change configurations when the location changes."

DesktopStandard provides desktop configuration management solutions for companies struggling to maintain a consistent yet dynamic managed configuratoin for users and computers. "For example, a roaming user may need to have print jobs automatically routed to the closest physical printer, have desktop shortcuts and drive letter mappings adjusted accordingly, or even have the permissions modified on a task or application basis," he says.

Working in a local area network does not have the same security issues as accessing the network from outside, and even has advantages over standard desktop-based systems. If users can access their information and applications from any machine, that data must come from a central source, which is easier to control than if it were stored on random desktops.

Paul Burke, senior product manager at Citrix, says: "Our 'smooth roaming' technology gives the ability to continue working even on a machine that you have no pre-installed components on. Using a completely vanilla machine you can get all your applications, data and work by using the Citrix infrastructure. That solves a bunch of mobility issues, but it also potentially allays some security concerns because with the Citrix infrastructure you can use a lot more centralisation of the applications and the corporate information. This issue of dealing with disparate corporate information is getting to be a big issue because of the amount of data that organisations have. If you can centralise it, you can have more granular control and you can make it available to the right people at the right time.

 

Horses for courses The driving force behind the mobility movement was the idea that by freeing workers from the constraints of the office they could make productive use of "dead" time, whether sitting on a train or in an airport.

As their devices got smaller and smarter to increase the efficiency of these mobile workers, the line between telephony and computing became blurred.

The two industries were approaching the same issue from opposite ends and when they met in the middle, partnerships had to be forged.

Shaun Orpen, marketing director for Orange Business Solutions ? part of the Orange mobile network ? says that the situation mirrors the challenges faced by customers when using sophisticated mobile solutions. "When you get e-mail on the phone, who supports you? Is it the telecoms team or is it the IT team?" he asks.

Microsoft and Orange have been collaborating for some time, as demonstrated by Orange's Windows Mobile-based SPV C500 Smartphone and the SPV M2000 PDA.

Orpen says: "When you talk about the SPV C500 with the Windows operating system, it really brings mobility to the masses. Form factors, battery life and security on mobile devices have been issues for IT managers in the past and these are all being eradicated."

On top of that, users of Exchange 2003 can synchronise devices over the air and automatically update Outlook e-mail, calendar and contacts.

With the depth of functionality embedded in such a wide range of devices, the challenge for consumers is to pick the right one for their needs. Volume users of e-mail would require a device with a qwerty keyboard, skim readers might prefer the traditional phone form of the C500, while users who wish to open attachments might prefer a PDA-type device. Orpen says: "Not even within one company would I say you ought to have one device to suit all types of worker. If you compare the requirements of a project manager with a salesman and a field engineer, you would give them different devices."

Getronics is implementing a pilot test of a range of Windows Mobile-based devices including the C500 and HP's iPAQ h6340.

Employees will use the devices for e-mail and PIM and they will run on Microsoft Exchange Server 2003. Getronics expects that the synchronising features of Windows Mobile 2003 with Exchange Server 2003 will lead to lower mobile messaging costs.

"Document handling on the Pocket PC Phone Edition device is far more advanced than on BlackBerry devices," says Wouter Bakker, global practice manager of mobility solutions at Getronics. "Users can even access network shares through a virtual private network connection. The ability of the Pocket PC Phone Edition device to handle large, standard Microsoft Office documents is an absolute must for the mobile worker."

 

Tablets the right medicine for healthcare Healthcare has always been a ripe sector for the mobility industry because of the combination of the facts that doctors have heavy workloads and hospitals are physically large places. It is also one of the most heartening ? the extra precision and efficiency that mobility solutions bring here can save lives.

Traditional doctors' rounds, where the doctor visits each patient in turn and records progress on a clipboard, take up valuable time and when the information is entered into an electronic system at the end of the day there is a danger of error from duplication or time sensitivity.

Tablet PCs are proving to be a great advantage. Workers can carry them in the same manner as they would a clipboard, they have access to patient records and can update them in real-time at the bedside.

"Hospitals can save an hour per doctor per day," says Scott Eckert, CEO of Tablet PC manufacturer Motion Computing. "The ability to enter information to the record at the point of patient care saves time for the doctor. It also improves patient care because you can pull out information ? like x-rays ? right there."

Motion's Tablet PCs fit into an overall solution based on electronic records management and a wireless network. Once in place, it shouldn't take long to make a return on the investment. Motion has installed systems in a range of hospitals and healthcare practices across North America and Europe.

Their suite of products includes peripherals that are designed to fit in with the way doctors and nurses work. "We have wall-mounts, for instance, so the doctor can put it in a sleeve while talking to the patient and it will be charging and connected to the network." Similar systems fit onto trolleys.

A medication management system uses barcodes fitted to bracelets on patients' wrists and on drugs. "When the nurse comes to administer drugs, they scan the barcode on the wrist and one on the drug and the Tablet makes sure it's the right patient, the right drug and indicates the correct dosage," says Eckert. "Something as simple as that reduces life-threatening errors."

Fujitsu Siemens implemented a wireless Tablet PC-based system at the University Hospital of Leipzig. Components included a terminal server architecture with two Intel-based Primergy RX300 servers, a wireless local area network and the Stylistic Tablet PC and Convertible Lifebook.

"The mobile Electronic Patient File is an important step for us towards higher quality and efficiency in the care process," says Dr Gert Funkat, the project director for the hospital. "Fujitsu Siemens Computers created the conditions for that step in a very effective way."

FirstHealth of the Carolinas, a US not-for-profit healthcare network, is using an HP-based IT system that lets them enter data online.

The solution, which includes HP Compaq desktops, notebooks and iPAQ Pocket PCs running on HP ProLiant servers, has improved productivity and reduced total cost of ownership.

The mobility part of the project has freed hospice nurses from manually preparing patient charts and has given home health care nurses greater flexibility.

"For our users, the patient is the primary focus, not technology," says Susan Bonville, director of information systems, customer support and operations at FirstHealth. "That's why it's important for us to give them easy-to-use technology that helps them give their patients first-rate health care. With HP products, we're making that happen."

 

The security balancing act We are constantly told that security is the top priority for business executives, for reasons of both prudence and compliance. But there is a tension between the productivity gains that a good mobility strategy can bring and the security risks that it also presents.

However you try to dress it up, using a mobile device to access corporate information from a remote location is not as secure as doing so on a connected PC within the walls of the organisation.

"Mobility is upping the ante between a user's ability to work and an IT department's ability to maintain a security policy," says Paul Burke, senior product manager for Citrix. The challenge for IT departments is to define a security policy that takes this into account.

Citrix provides technology that allows IT departments to set different levels of control to different data according to what kind of device is trying to access it and over what connection.

For example, you may allow someone from the finance office to view, edit, print, or store local copies of financial spreadsheets if they are sat at their desktop PC in the office. But if they are coming in from outside the organisation, you may choose to give them access to a limited set of that information.

"We recognise that there are plenty of mobile working scenarios where someone will require all their data locally," says Burke. "We can provide a layer for granular access control so if I connect to our network there is certain information that I will be allowed to take off and there is other information that I will only be allowed to view, edit and manipulate while I'm in the office."

He adds: "There's always this trade-off of mobility versus security. But we're providing a means for them to achieve both goals without compromise ? to achieve their security objectives and to enable their workforce to be more mobile and benefit from the business value that brings to them."

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