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News and analysis of developments in the enterprise communication industry and market with primary focus on Europe.

The author aims to tap into ideas, insights and thoughts of the readers to get varied perspectives.

Views expressed in this blog are solely the author's opinion and in no way reflect those of his employer.

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Bell Labs Laptop Guardian turned into a product by Alcatel-Lucent

Omniaccess 3500 Laptop Guardian is a external card that interfaces laptops. These devices offer plug-n-play corporate VPN client service. In addition, the device can be used for remote laptop management for performance and against theft.


I think that this product offers critical value to enterprises. It gives its IT staff control over staff laptops outside the offices. Remote control and management are the USPs of this card.
From the usage point of view, support for different wireless access technologies in addition to wireline will enhance the power of the offering.
Most current offerings address one challenge or the other. For instance, the external 3G card offered by a mobile service provider offers 3G transport links to its network and levies charge accordingly. Secure ID offers access management only. Omniaccess 3500 will offer both and more; in addition it will hopefully give IT staff the control of the resource.
Mobile service providers stand to gain the most out of this product, although the benefit for fixed-wireless/wireline is significant too. The laptop guardian has the potential to add multimedia traffic to mobile data channels.
I think this product is a useful piece of innovation. Saying so, I would rather like to see this card technology embedded in the motherboard of the laptop instead of being a add-on card.

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