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Vipin V. Nair

Here's a platform that will make any computer, with any operating system and located anywhere, your own computer.

IT'S a common enough occurrence. You, as a journalist, are required to cover an event in a faraway village. A cyber café in a nearby town is your only way to file a report before the deadline. How often would you have wished that you could just access your server back in office from wherever you are. That way, all you need to do is put down those first few paragraphs; all the background information can simply be cut and pasted from your files. And so much time is saved in the bargain.

Of course, today's digital age does offer options. But then they may not always be just what you want. For instance, carrying a notebook computer has its own inconveniences. A PDA (personal digital assistant) is too small.

So what Realm Systems, a Salt Lake City, Utah-based start-up, has come out with sounds interesting. The company has unveiled a mobile computing platform that will make any computer, running any operating system and located anywhere, your computer.

Realm Systems says its mobile computing platform delivers desktop and enterprise application in a secure way to users on the move. They can access their enterprise applications from any place, at any time, and on any computer. This means that employees can virtually take their entire office networks and computers anywhere they go! And can work on the desktop environment they are familiar with.

The new platform consists of a small mobile phone-like device, which the company calls the `Mobile Personal Server (MPS),' and the Realm SOBA Router.

"Our new MPS and SOBA router are combining the power of the enterprise network with the simplicity of a secure USB-powered device to create a revolution in mobile computing. With Realm, any computer, any operating system, anywhere, is your computer," says Rick White, CEO, Realm Systems. Let's see how this works. The MPS is a secure USB-powered computing device that has an embedded operating system with up to 64 MB of DRAM. It has dual 425 Mhz PowerPC processors, up to 1GB of flash using either an SD expansion slot or up to a 20GB hard drive. You can connect it to any computer with a USB interface, and the MPS will take over the monitor, keyboard, mouse and Internet connection.

"With the MPS intermittent connectivity capability, the enterprise user can literally stop writing mid-sentence in their word processor or other application, unplug and go, then plug in at another location and the cursor will be waiting in the same place, on any computer with a USB interface — no long boot up required," Realm Systems claims.

The MPS has a built-in biometric identification system and complete password protection to ensure security. Every time the MPS is connected to a computer with Net connection, it will authenticate the approved user through a 2,048-bit encrypted VPN tunnel. "This provides true secure access to files, applications and enterprise services without jeopardising confidential enterprise data, or requiring any software to be installed on the host".

The Realm SOBA router is a centralised back-end system that maximises desktop control and security for thousands of mobile personal servers. Realm Systems claims that it will also significantly lower desktop maintenance costs.

"Designed to provide IT managers with a greater degree of control over user desktops, the SOBA router makes it easy to deploy and manage employee applications across the entire workforce from one single point of contact through a distributed desktop environment," says the company.

Every time a connection is made, the SOBA router would verify the user's thumbprint, user name and password in the MPS. If an MPS is lost or stolen, the router can make the device useless in a few seconds. "And, since the SOBA router saves an exact duplicate of the enterprise users' desktop environment, which includes personal server applications, data, and desktop look and feel, a missing MPS can be inexpensively replaced in a few minutes".

The company targets industries such as entertainment, financial services, education, healthcare and the government sector. It says that it has a waiting list of 100 potential customers, including a number of Fortune 500 companies. By the first quarter of 2006, the company intends to introduce an MPS for individuals too.

Picture by K.R. Dheepak

vipin@thehindu.co.in

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