Handheld Devices for the Mobile Workforce

For employees who are often out of the office or away from their desk, on-the-go access to corporate applications and e-mail is essential. There are dozens of PDAs, smartphones and handheld devices on the market. Which products hold the most appeal for busy workers who need to keep chugging along even when they're not in the office? 

Hardwyre recommends the following five Windows Mobile devices with Exchange ActiveSync compatibility to let you get work done when and where you need to. (By the way, the iPhone is pretty but it isn't on our list). These devices are available through the AT&T network, but various configurations of each are also offered by Alltel, Verizon and T-Mobile.

We'd like to point out that each product below comes equipped with ActiveSync. ActiveSync is a Microsoft synchronization program that allows a mobile device to be synchronised with either a desktop PC, or a server running Microsoft Exchange Server. This means that your corporate desktop e-mail and calendar data will automatically sync with the handheld device — and there's no extra software to buy.

AT&T Tilt™ (touch screen)

The AT&T Tilt™ is a 3G UMTS/HSDPA Windows Mobile device with a large touch screen and a spacious keyboard. The AT&T Tilt™ is the most comprehensive wireless device on the market today. This device keeps you connected with email, text and instant messaging, Internet access, personal organizer, video, satellite radio, and more all at broadband speeds. Wi-Fi, GPS navigation and Push-to-Talk round out the robust features on the newest device from AT&T making the Tilt your ultimate mobile companion.

Features & Benefits:

• 2.8" tilting color touch screen and sliding QWERTY keyboard - input information quickly and easily
• Windows Mobile® 6 Professional - access your office apps (Word, Excel, & PowerPoint) from anywhere
• Tri-band UMTS/HSDPA; Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE - connect and work at broadband speeds
• Integrated Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) support - gain increased coverage and speed with Wi-Fi hotspots
• Integrated GPS - Find your next destination with voice guided directions, and 3D color maps
• AT&T Mobile Music, Video, TV and games - take a break with the latest entertainment
• 3 mega-pixel camera with autofocus and 10x digital zoom - capture life's moments with exceptional detail
• Enhanced memory and micro SD expansion slot - store even more emails, documents, and music
• Push to Talk - enjoy instant voice communication
• Bluetooth™ v2.0 - increase productivity with hands-free communications

 Palm^® Treo 750

3G Broadband Speeds—Palm Ease of Use

The combination of Windows Mobile features with Palm's enhanced usability makes it a great phone for business or personal use. Talk and download data at the same time. Browse the web and download data at broadband speeds.

Features & Benefits:

• Tri-band UMTS*— Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE for global use
• Microsoft® Windows Mobile 5.0 with
  Direct Push technology
• 128MB ROM | 64MB SDRAM | 60MB user available
• Samsung 300MHz Processor
• Integrated QWERTY keyboard
• 240x240 64K Color LCD Touch Screen
• Bluetooth® v1.2 and Infrared connectivity
• Mini SD card slot for greater storage and expansion
• Take your favorite music and videos with you using Windows Media Player 10 Mobile
• Pocket MSN, access Hotmail, MSN Messenger and more
• Mobile Instant Messaging - Yahoo!® Messenger, AOL® Instant Messenger, & Windows Live ™ Messenger (available via MEdia Net download)
• Optional 1.3 mega-pixel camera with 2x digital zoom and video capture

MOTO Q™

Beauty, power and intelligence unite with the MOTO Q™ — an elegant, high-performance Windows Mobile® 6 smart device that merges business with pleasure.

Keep moving and boost your productivity with the MOTO Q™ . The new MOTO Q™ is a 3G, Microsoft Windows Mobile 6, integrated GPS, world-capable smart device. It offers high-speed communications, productivity and multimedia services to meet the needs of mobile professionals.

With a full QWERTY keyboard and electro-luminescent keys, the versatile, feature-rich MOTO Q™  combines powerful business productivity with applications like Windows Mobile 6 with multimedia entertainment in one sleek device. There is no compromise with the MOTO Q™ . It's packed with robust tools including stereo Bluetooth® wireless technology, 2.0 megapixel camera, high-speed Internet connections and optional microSD™ card supporting up to 32GB. Enjoy the capability to view and edit Microsoft Office® documents from over 135 countries in the world.

Features & Benefits:

• Windows Mobile 6 optimized for Microsoft Exchange 2003 and 2007 — Develop a personalized, integrated work flow with enhanced information access and security features
• Integrated GPS — Access location-based services like TeleNav GPS Navigator™ for maps and directions while on-the-go
• 3G Services — Experience rich multimedia that informs, delights and helps you to express yourself and personalize your life
• Thin QWERTY device with a full, ergonomic keyboard — Achieve true portability without sacrificing functionality
• Large, high-resolution display (320 x 240 pixels) — Expand your view with vibrant color and text that is easy to read

Samsung BlackJack^tm

AT&T exclusive Samsung BlackJack — the thin, new Windows Mobile 5.0 PDA in the U.S. Quickly access your corporate and personal email and view attachments in real-time.

Features & Benefits:

• Support for Mobile versions of Microsoft Office programs
• Use voice in 185 countries worldwide and data in 105 countries with Quad band GSM and dual band HSDPA
• 64 MB SDRAM/128 MB flash ROM
• Large 2.2" 65K TFT QVGA color display
• 1.3 mega pixel camera and video recorder
• Rich internet browsing with Internet Explorer
• Bluetooth® 2.0 connectivity
• Stay up to date with instant access to contacts, calendar, tasks and notes
• Enjoy streaming live video with AT&T Video and the latest tunes with AT&T Music

AT&T 8525

The AT&T 8525 is a feature-rich Windows Mobile Pocket PC providing access to your personal or corporate email, Internet, and your critical personal or business applications—all at broadband speeds. And with simultaneous voice and data functionality, you won't miss a call when surfing the web or responding to email.

Features & Benefits:

• Tri-band UMTS/HSDPA; Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE for global use
• Microsoft® Windows Mobile™ 5.0 with Messaging and Security Feature Pack
• Mobile Instant Messaging - Yahoo!® Messenger, AOL® Instant Messenger, & Windows Live ™ Messenger (available via MEdia Net download)
• 128MB ROM / 64MB SDRAM
• Samsung 400MHz Processor
• Sliding QWERTY keyboard
• 2.8" QVGA 320x240 64K Color LCD Touch Screen
• Push to Talk capable*
• Bluetooth v2.0
• Integrated WiFi (802.11b/g)
• Micro SD expansion slot for greater storage and expansion
• Take advantage of Windows Media Player 10 Mobile to take your favorite music and videos with you.
• Log in to Pocket MSN – Hotmail, MSN Messenger and more!
• Optional 2.0 mega-pixel camera with built-in flash and video capability

Virtualization Tools for the Desktop

Are you keeping an old Windows '98 PC around for that one piece of software you only use twice a year and never plan to upgrade? Do you have an itch to try out that new Linux ‘Ubuntu' that all the other geeks are talking about, but don't want to dedicate a PC just for occasional use? A virtual machine running '98 or Linux that you can fire up when needed is just the ticket.

Things are a little easier now than they were just a year ago. With one of these desktop virtualization tools, running multiple operating systems on one computer is easier than ever (use these tools at your own risk!):

Virtual PC

From Microsoft: Use Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 to run multiple operating systems at the same time on the same physical computer. Switch between virtual machines with the click of a button. Use virtual machines to run legacy applications, provide support, train users, and enhance quality assurance.

Virtual PC lets you create separate virtual machines on your Windows desktop, each of which virtualizes the hardware of a complete physical computer. Use virtual machines to run operating systems such as MS-DOS, Windows, and OS/2. You can run multiple operating systems at once on a single physical computer and switch between them as easily as switching applications—instantly, with a mouse click. Virtual PC is perfect for any scenario in which you need to support multiple operating systems, whether you use it for tech support, legacy application support, training, or just for consolidating physical computers.

Benefits

Virtual PC provides a time-saving and cost-saving solution anywhere users must run multiple operating systems. Use Virtual PC in the following scenarios:

• Ease Migration: Run legacy applications in a virtual machine instead of delaying the deployment of a new operating system just because of application incompatibility. Test your migration plans using virtual machines instead of actual physical computers.
• Do More in Less Time: Support staff can run multiple operating systems on a single physical computer and switch between them easily. They can also restore virtual machines to their previous state almost instantly. Train students on multiple operating systems and virtual networks instead of purchasing and supporting additional computers.
• Streamline Deployment: Test software on different operating systems more easily. One crashing application or operating system doesn't affect others.
• Accelerate Development: Increase quality assurance by testing and documenting your software on multiple operating systems using virtual machines. Decrease time-to-market by reducing reconfiguration time.

Specs

The Virtual PC application requires a 400 MHz Pentium-compatible processor (1.0 GHz or faster recommended), and requires approximately 20 MB of disk space. It runs on Windows Vista Business, Windows Vista Enterprise, Windows Vista Ultimate, Windows XP Professional, or Windows XP Tablet PC Edition.

The real requirements for running Virtual PC are those necessary to support the guest operating systems that you will run. Add the disk requirements for every guest OS you'll install and add the memory requirements for every guest OS you will run simultaneously, plus memory for the host OS. Below are the requirements for some of the operating systems that can be run as a guest operating system. Virtual PC can run most x86 operating systems, not just the operating systems listed below, in a virtual machine environment.

Download Virtual PC free from Download.com

VMware Workstation

From VMware: VMware Workstation 6 makes it simple to create and run multiple virtual machines on your desktop or laptop computer. You can convert an existing physical PC into a VMware virtual machine, or create a new virtual machine from scratch. Each virtual machine represents a complete PC, including the processor, memory, network connections and peripheral ports.

VMware Workstation lets you use your virtual machines to run Windows, Linux and a host of other operating systems side-by-side on the same computer. You can switch between operating systems instantly with a click of a mouse, share files between virtual machines with drag-and-drop functionality and access all the peripheral devices you rely on.

Take Snapshots & Videos of your Virtual Machines

With Workstation, you can take a “snapshot” that preserves the state of a virtual machine so you can return to it at any time. Snapshots are useful when you need to revert your virtual machine to a prior, stable system state. Workstation displays thumbnails of all your snapshots on a single screen, making it easy for you to track and revert to a previously saved snapshot.

You can even use Workstation 6 to record and play video files that capture all changes to a virtual machine over a period of time. This function is exclusive to VMware Workstation and is incredibly useful for software debugging, Help Desk forensics, sales demonstrations and training.

Run an Entire Multi-tier System on a Single Host Computer

Run multi-tier enterprise applications on a single piece of hardware by managing network-connected virtual machines with the Teams feature of Workstation 6. Teams let you create virtual network environments that include client, server and database virtual machines.

With Workstation Teams, you can turn an entire multi-tier environment on and off with a single click of the mouse button. Workstation displays live thumbnails of all connected virtual machines, enabling you to easily identify and switch between the virtual machines associated with a team.

Clone your Virtual Machines to Accelerate Deployment

Installing operating systems and applications can be time consuming. With clones, you can make many copies of a virtual machine from a single installation and configuration process. This capability makes it fast and simple to distribute standardized computing environments to employees and students, or to create a baseline configuration for testing.

For IT Professionals

IT professionals around the world use VMware Workstation to create and test multiple computing environments as virtual machines on a single PC. Broad support for a wide range of operating systems makes Workstation an ideal solution for running legacy applications on virtual machines, or to overcome migration issues associated with new operating systems such as Windows Vista.

Key benefits:

• Reduce PC equipment costs by 50-60%
• Facilitate software migration and updates
• Accelerate resolution of Help Desk tickets

Desktop administrators use Workstation to test software updates, patches and hotfixes in an isolated environment before deploying them across the network. Help Desk technicians also benefit from Workstation by creating virtual machine libraries that they can use to replicate and resolve user problems more quickly.

Download a free trial from Download.com

VirtualBox (Open Source)

From InnoTek:InnoTek VirtualBox is a general-purpose full virtualizer for x86 hardware. Targeted at server, desktop and embedded use, it is now the only professional-quality virtualization solution that is also Open Source Software. VirtualBox has an extremely modular design with well-defined internal programming interfaces and a client/server design. The configuration settings of virtual machines are stored entirely in XML and are independent of the local machines. Virtual machine definitions can therefore easily be ported to other computers.

Download VirtualBox free from Download.com

Server Virtualization Software from VMware, Microsoft and XenSource

If you've got three single application servers supporting Accounts Payable and your data center struggles to maintain 84 degrees in the middle of January, it's time to consider virtualizing those servers. Sever virtualization allows you to merge several applications into one server, which saves money on hardware, real estate and energy.

Let's take a look at server consolidation software from the virtualization industry leaders: VMware's Server and Microsoft's Virtual Server.

VMware Server

From VMware: VMware Server installs on any existing server hardware and partitions a physical server into multiple virtual machines by abstracting processor, memory, storage and networking resources, giving you greater hardware utilization and flexibility. Streamline software development and testing and simplify server provisioning as you utilize the ability to "build once, deploy many times."

With this robust yet easy to use software you can:

• Streamline software development and testing by allowing developers to create multiple environments with different operating systems on the same server.
• Simplify IT testing of patches, new applications and operating systems by allowing systems administrators to test in secure virtual machines and be able to roll back to a clean state by leveraging snapshots.
• Simplify server provisioning by building a virtual machine once and deploying it multiple times.
• Evaluate software in ready-to-run virtual machines without installation and configuration.
• Re-host legacy operating systems such as Windows NT Server 4.0 and Windows 2000 Server in a virtual machine running on new hardware and operating system.
• Leverage pre-built, ready-to-run virtual appliances that include virtual hardware, operating system and application environments.

VMware Server is a free virtualization product for Windows and Linux servers with enterprise-class support and VirtualCenter management. VMware Server is a robust yet easy to use server virtualization product and is based on proven virtualization technology, which has been used by thousands of customers for more than six years. VMware Server:

• Runs on any standard x86 hardware
• Supports 64-bit guest operating systems, including Windows, Linux, and Solaris
• Can be managed by VMware VirtualCenter to efficiently provision, monitor and manage infrastructure from a central management console
• Supports two-processor Virtual SMP, enabling a single virtual machine to span multiple physical processors
• Runs on a wider variety of Linux and Windows host and guest operating systems than any server virtualization product on the market
• Captures entire state of a virtual machine and rolls back at any time with the click of a single button
• Installs like an application, with quick and easy, wizard-driven installation
• Quick and easy, wizard-driven virtual machine creation
• Opens VMware or Microsoft virtual machine format and Symantec LiveState Recovery images with VM Importer
• Supports Intel Virtualization Technology
• Protects investment with an easy upgrade path to VMware Infrastructure

Microsoft Virtual Server

From Microsoft: In conjunction with Windows Server 2003, Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 provides a virtualization platform that runs most major x86 operating systems in a guest environment, and is supported by Microsoft as a host for Windows Server operating systems and Windows Server System applications. Virtual Server 2005 R2's comprehensive COM API, in combination with the Virtual Hard Drive (VHD) format and support for virtual networking, provide administrators complete scripted control of portable, connected virtual machines and enable easy automation of deployment, and ongoing change and configuration.

Additionally, its integration with a wide variety of existing Microsoft and third-party management tools allows administrators to seamlessly manage a Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 environment with their existing physical server management tools. A wide array of complementary product and service offerings are available from Microsoft and its partners to help businesses plan for, deploy, and manage Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 in their environment.

Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Scenarios

Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 addresses four key customer scenarios:

• Consolidate infrastructure, application, and branch office server workloads. Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 is ideal for server consolidation in both the datacenter and the branch office, allowing IT staff to make more efficient use of their hardware resources. It also allows IT staff to enhance their overall productivity and rapidly deploy new servers that enable the people in their organization to quickly address changing business needs.
• Consolidate and re-host legacy applications. Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 enables re-hosting of legacy operating systems (Windows NT Server 4.0 and Windows 2000 Server) and their associated custom applications from older hardware to new hardware running Windows Server 2003.
• Automate and consolidate software test and development environments. Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 enables IT and development staff to consolidate their test and development server farm and automate the provisioning of virtual machines.
• Simplify disaster and recovery planning. Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 can be used as part of a disaster and recovery plan that requires application portability and flexibility across hardware platforms.
  
  

Xen Hypervisor

From XenSource: Enterprises are embracing Xen for server virtualization because it enables them to increase server utilization, consolidate servers, and dramatically reduce complexity and overall total cost of ownership. Xen is the fastest and most secure virtualization software available today, enabling every server to support multiple virtual servers each with resource guarantees to ensure that its application layer SLA is met.

Server Virtualization with the Xen Hypervisor

With Xen virtualization, a thin software layer known as the Xen hypervisor is inserted between the server's hardware and the operating system. This provides an abstraction layer that allows each physical server to run one or more “virtual servers,” effectively decoupling the operating system and its applications from the underlying physical server.

Once a virtual server image has been created it can run on any server, at any time, and multiple virtual servers can simultaneously share a single server, increasing its utilization while receiving a resource guarantee that ensures that application layer performance criteria are met.

Xen Is an Open Source Technology

The Xen hypervisor is a unique open source technology, developed collaboratively by the world's best engineers at over 20 of the most innovative data center solution vendors, including Intel, AMD, Cisco, Dell, Egenera, HP, IBM, Mellanox, Network Appliance, Novell, Red Hat, SGI, Sun, Unisys, Veritas, Voltaire, and of course, XenSource. Xen is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL2).

And best of all, as an open source technology, Xen is available free for download. XenSource also provides simple tools for the community to download, install, test and develop using Xen.

Xen enables IT managers to increase utilization of server resources, achieve server consolidation, scale their test & development environments, and achieve greater business continuity through dynamic provisioning. But to scale Xen deployments across the enterprise, users need a comprehensive tool set that enables them to deploy, control and monitor their Xen based data center.

Paravirtualization Provides Near-Native Performance

Xen's paravirtualization technology is widely acknowledged as the fastest and most secure virtualization software in the industry. Xen offers near-native performance for virtual servers with up to 10 times less overhead than proprietary offerings, and benchmarked overhead of well under 5% in most cases compared to 35% or higher overhead rates for other virtualization technologies.

With the 3.0 release, Xen extends its feature leadership with functionality required to virtualize the servers found in today's enterprise data centers. New features include:

• Support for up to 32-way SMP guest
• Intel® VT-x and AMD Pacifica hardware virtualization support
• PAE support for 32 bit servers with over 4 GB memory
• x86/64 support for both AMD64 and EM64T

Lean and Secure

Xen is exceptionally lean-- less than 50,000 lines of code. That translates to extremely low overhead and near-native performance for guests. Xen re-uses existing device drivers (both closed and open source) from Linux, making device management easy. Moreover Xen is robust to device driver failure and protects both guests and the hypervisor from faulty or malicious drivers.

Utility Based Computing

Xen is a key enabler in enterprises' aspirations towards a utility-based computing model, in which any server can run any operating system and any application, at any time, with dynamic load balancing of resources both within each server, between the guests, and across servers.

Per VM Resource Guarantees

Xen provides superb resource partitioning, for CPU, memory, and block and network I/O. This resource protection model leads to improved security because guests and drivers are DoS-proof. Xen is fully open to scrutiny by the security community and its security is continuously tested. Xen is also the foundation for a Multi-Level Secure system architecture being developed by XenSource, IBM and Intel.

An Emerging Open Industry Standard

Xen enjoys extraordinary community support. It is a de-facto, industry endorsed open source virtualization standard backed by the industry's leading enterprise solution vendors. Xen is, and always will be, open sourced, uniting the industry and the Xen ecosystem to speed the adoption of virtualization in the enterprise.

Virtualization: Changing the Reality of Information Technology

Virtualization — the science of enabling one computer or server do the work of many — is altering the way businesses manage computing resources and changing the skills they expect from their IT staffs. In an industry driven by emerging technology, virtualization is the Next Big Thing, delivering efficient hardware use, better resource allocation, flexible application services and lower costs.

In essence, virtualization lets you transform hardware into software. Use software such as VMware ESX Server to transform or “virtualize” the hardware resources of an x86-based computer — including the CPU, RAM, hard disk and network controller — to create a fully functional virtual machine that can run its own operating system and applications just like a “real” computer. This means that multiple virtual machines share hardware resources without interfering with each other so that you can safely run several operating systems and applications at the same time on a single computer.

The concept behind virtualization isn't new. IBM has been doing this on its mainframes for more than 30 years, and we've had blade servers for the past five years. But what is new is that the power of a virtual machine can be delivered to the PC platform specifically for x86-based hardware, giving flexibility to use the technology in ways that it wasn't originally intended.

The standard for x86 servers was to run one application on one server. And that was fine when servers were cheap to buy and cheap to run. But then things started to get messy as more and more servers were added to meet application demand. Data center managers were facing serious usage issues, spending millions on wasted server space and energy to cool all those servers.

But with virtualization, that can change. Instead of running one e-mail application on a dedicated server, you can run that e-mail application, mobile messaging, databases and other software on a single server, all isolated into virtual operating system images that won't affect each other. Server virtualization lets programs share hardware, even though they don't share operating systems. The result is significant cost savings from reduced equipment, administrative and facilities expenses.

Advantages of Server Virtualization

It doesn't take an accountant to understand the cost savings in the process, whether getting the most from your hardware or reducing expenses in storage, space, hardware and utilities. Virtualization can enable anyone who uses a computer to save time, money and energy while achieving more with the computer hardware they already own.

The potential of virtualization is compelling: A recent study from research group Info-Tech shows that businesses adopting virtualization realize a 40 to 75 percent reduction in hardware acquisition costs and monthly recurring savings in hardware maintenance costs of 25 to 50 percent.

At the enterprise level, server virtualization brings these advantages to companies that embrace it:

1. More efficient use of server assets. Virtualization allows one server to be partitioned into several virtual servers. This increases the capacity utilization per server, which can dramatically cut hardware, real estate and energy costs.
2. Simplified server administration and increased reliability across servers and multiple operating systems.
3. Easier management of IT assets and information. Virtualization can facilitate tasks such as back up and testing.
4. Potential for Linux and Windows compatibility. Linux and Windows can share resources in a virtualized server. And as those two operating systems are the majority of the unit installed base today, virtualization might solve the problem of Linux and Windows interoperability.
5. Less expensive disaster recovery. Instead of paying for a duplicate data center, virtualization allows application environments to be re-created on fewer off-site servers. This changes the classical "backup-and-restore" philosophy, by providing backup images that can "boot" into live virtual machines, capable of taking over workload for a production server experiencing an outage.
6. More efficient testing and training. Hardware virtualization can give root access to a virtual machine. This can be very useful for software development, testing and deployment.

Gain An Understanding Of The Options Available

When considering virtualization for your business, it's important to gain an understanding of the options available simply because of the technology's potential to influence every area of your business and IT infrastructure. The current key focus areas are:

• Server virtualization. This is the most common application of virtualization in businesses. The market leader and Hardwyre partner, VMware, offers the ESX Server, Microsoft offers with Virtual Server, and new releases from Virtual Iron and XenSource bring other options.
• Storage virtualization. It provides the ability to pool many different individual types of physical storage and manage these as logical pools of data that can be allocated to different applications and services as needed.
• Software virtualization. This continues the common theme of abstracting the service or application away from its physical environment, enabling it to exist and run in any location. Virtualization enables the co-existence of applications on the same physical environment by encapsulating them so everything they need to run is available within a virtual environment.
• Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. VDI takes the concept of the virtual machine and uses it to run multiple PC clients rather than servers, thus virtualizing your PC requirements rather than having to run physical desktops in your organization.
• Data Center. Network Virtualization consolidates individual virtual environments into a logical whole and leads to a complete abstraction of these from any physical elements. Once infrastructure has become virtualized, it frees organizations up to treat their IT environment as a utility supplier. Storage and processing power can be allocated and used by services and applications as required, and use of resources can be maximized without the risk of over provisioned capacity being wasted.

Virtualization provides businesses with the flexibility to change the way they do IT. Saving time, money, and resources while preserving investments and enhancing operations are pretty powerful arguments for deploying virtualization technology. The business world appears to be ready for it — are you?

To learn more about virtualization, call your Hardwyre network engineer today at 501.851.2880. We'd love to have a conversation about the ways it can positively impact your business and your bottom line.