Road warriors looking for anytime anywhere access to their personal data and applications have a new alternative. The MojoPac Enterprise Suite essentially lets IT departments setup their choice of USB mobile storage devices for users to securely access their applications and data.
The USB storage device can then be plugged into any notebook or desktop computer with Windows XP to give the user access to their familiar computer environment. Support of Microsoft Vista is in beta-test and expected to be available later this year.
“You pick the device; this gives IT departments a wide range of hardware choices,” said Srihari Kumar, vice president of enterprise sales and business development at MojoPac creator RingCube Technologies in Santa Clara, Calif.
The Suite consists of three new product lines: the MojoStation Series, the MojoDrive Series and the MojoNet Series. All three products encapsulate a user’s digital workspace into an encrypted digital image The MojoStation Series, priced at $49.95 and $19.95 per seat for a perpetual license, is designed to offer home and remote office workers a secure digital image they can download of the files and applications they’re authorized to use. IT departments can configure access with support for all corporate security policies that may prohibit copying sensitive information to any storage device. In the event of an employee departure, the IT department can disable MojoStation remotely, stopping former employees from accessing, sharing or corrupting proprietary information. Kumar said while in use, the image remains localized so, for example, a virus can’t be transferred to the host machine. The MojoDrive Series offer a portable enterprise “MojoPac” that business IT staff build and load onto a USB storage device. Lastly, the MojoNet Series is designed to let IT managers configure a secure MojoPac image that is provided to employees through a secure corporate network. When the employee connects to the network and clicks on the MojoNet image, the complete digital workspace is downloaded to their desktop to convert any Windows PC into a secure corporate desktop. RingCube said that as long as MojoNet is open, it uses the processing power, network connections and approved peripherals on the host PC. “It’s similar to a thin client model, but there the model is your computer is a blade in the data center,” said Kumar. “We’re saying there’s a lot of power at the endpoint.” When the employee closes MojoNet, the entire digital workspace is synchronized with the version stored in the corporate data center, then deleted from the host PC. There are thin client and other remote access solutions, but analyst Rob Enderle, with the Enderle Group, thinks RingCube has the proverbial unique value proposition. “Corporations spend thousands and even millions of dollars managing images, not to mention the aggravation and time it takes to upgrade,” Enderle told internetnews.com. “Now from any Windows machine you can log in and get your ‘personality’, the desktop you’re used to.”
