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Analysis: Mobile Device Management: Page 2 of 22

Nine vendors make those management systems, and four of them--Avocent LANDesk, Nokia Intellisync, Novell and Sybase iAnywhere--came to our labs for testing for a follow-up to our last mobile device management review (see "Herding Highly Mobile Cats"). All provide top-notch support for handhelds and laptops, but there are differences among them. Sybase's Afaria offers the best data encryption. Nokia's Intellisync Device Management platform introduces self-service features. And Novell and Avocent LANDesk build on capabilities in their corresponding desktop-management tools. For comparison, we also looked at Research In Motion's BlackBerry Enterprise Server (see "What About RIM?" ) and hosted device-management products from Perlego and iPass (see "Can't Someone Else Do It?").

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Tool Scope

With MDM products serving as the base for deploying applications, managing policies and securing devices, other applications and management products can then be layered on top. Mobile VPN and connection-management software; content-management systems; peripheral device management software; and mobile virus protection, firewall and encryption products all can play a role, working with an appropriate MDM product. However, we confined the scope of our comparison to the deployment of applications, policy management and security.

That casts a wide net and, aside from the four vendors that accepted our invitation, five vendors declined. After initially accepting our invitation, Altiris backed out, saying it's working on new code for its mobile security piece and couldn't provide shipping code by our deadline. Motorola Good declined, stating its product was geared more toward security and not some of the other features our review would focus on (such as inventory management and device backup). Hewlett-Packard/Bitfone and Synchronica were unable to respond by our invitation deadline. Ericsson didn't respond at all.

Architecture