Netbooks set to challenge laptops

The growing use of powerful and compact mobile devices for personal use makes their appearance in business IT development plans inevitable. Faced with the option of pocketing an ultraportable device or lugging around a hefty laptop and its associated power supply in a carrying case, most people would opt for the former. IT has to acknowledge this and start to plan for a broader range of devices connecting to the network in future.

Laptops already constitute the majority of new PCs deployed by businesses and as firms ask their staff to work from home, on the road and in the field more often, greater portability will only be accentuated whether it comes from smaller laptops, smartphones, wireless communications or new categories of product altogether.

Of particular interest at the moment is the status of smartphones in the enterprise. The challenge today is that the sheer range of devices and operating systems makes it difficult to cater for everything and everyone, and there is no real leader to narrow down the options. This makes the situation different from the days when laptops punched the first holes in corporate containment policies and IT managers had to start to think outside the confines of the corporate network. Although the arrival of mobile PCs was a challenge, at least they all had the same characteristics and nearly all were based on DOS or Windows.

Portable six pack

There are already at least six main operating systems in current smartphone ranges: Symbian, Windows Mobile, Research In Motion (RIM)'s BlackBerry OS, various Linux variants, Java and Apple iPhone. However none has gained a globally dominant position. This situation looks like getting worse before it gets better and there are other operating systems in the offing, notably Google's Android platform.

Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group, observes that because of the disparate nature of operating systems, the first decision made by managers should be around overall policy.

"The business strategy for now should be based on the fact that smartphones are still evolving and are not yet at the end point of their development," he says. "The focus should be on reducing overall complexity to enable a company to anticipate and embrace change because the businesses that can take advantage of change will be those that move most quickly."

Perhaps controversially, Enderle thinks that the best policy in an uncertain market is to support everything and give the users the freedom to select their own devices. For every person who loves the iPhone, for example, there are many who would prefer to use some other ultraportable device. Smartphones are much more 'personal' than personal computers, and comfort in the form of a device's look and feel are of equal importance to the device's features and functions.

The problem with an all-embracing -policy is that applications have to be able to run on every system, and be supported. To have to rebuild and migrate a mature applications structure would spell disaster.

This is where cloud computing can be of use. All of the devices should have a web browser and can therefore be treated as thin clients capable of accessing web-based applications and services. This has distinct advantages because the security element is of even greater importance with these small and easily pocketed units. By transferring processing and data to the internet cloud, the security element is addressed because little or no data resides on the device and anti-malware measures can be applied. There is also the spin-off benefit that battery life will be extended by reducing loads on the local processor. The downside is that more data flows between the device and the network so telecoms and service provider contracts must be carefully chosen to minimise this expense.

The use of a browser does bring its own limitations because internet applications often have reduced functionality and not all of the features found in web sites are supported all of the time. Some phones, for example, do not support Adobe Flash so there may be an element of programming down to the lowest common denominator to ensure a trouble-free experience.

Mikko Hyppönen, chief research officer for security software firm F-Secure, sees problems with allowing employees to decide what they want to use, arguing that device management is restricted and complex with a disparate collection of phones.

"If you don't actively manage these devices by deciding which ones you want to support and don't actively buy them for your people, they will buy their own and you will be limited in deciding how things are done," he warns.

"This has led to the situation where, although the policies and rules for using your company laptop are pretty good, policies to govern access to company networks and data may be non-existent. Even worse, when companies have passed the buck on making decisions regarding what kind of devices to get and what the rules are, [this] leads to the situation where the employees go their own way and buy their own iPhones, their own BlackBerries or their own PDAs for corporate use. The company is then in a position where it has no say on the policies because they don't own the devices."

Hyppönen's viewpoint is likely to be most strongly echoed in the policies of businesses such as the finance sector where watertight security is essential.

"RIM's BlackBerry is worthy of praise because it's very simple for the administrators to oversee and none of the users can install undesirable third-party products," he notes. "If you want to restrict the use of unsanctioned software, and many companies do because they only want the devices to be used for reading company emails and making calls, then there is a lot to be said for BlackBerry. Also, when it comes to adding new applications, it's one switch and then it's on all the phones."

Despite Hyppönen's support for the one-model approach, he admits that many of the security issues can be handed off to the cloud. However, localised security is still important, he warns.

"With smartphones you may want to put it in the cloud because it makes the handset's load lighter and it's much easier to update," he says.

"Some things can't be done in the cloud, however: Bluetooth access security, for -instance, or someone giving you a memory card. If you use Wi-Fi, your IP address is naked because there's no firewall at Starbucks and no firewall on the phone."

Even if ultraportables prove to be totally fireproof, the growing e-mafia in industrial espionage will find easy access if they can inveigle an employee to access sensitive company data on their behalf. An essential element will be auditing software to record access histories.

One of the unknowns in the ultraportable access equation for laptops, smartphones and other devices is how access will be achieved. At the moment there is a choice between relatively expensive but widespread GSM/GPRS/3G or sometimes-free Wi-Fi access. Later this year or early next year we will see the roll-out of WiMax networks that promise faster links over greater distances. The ideal would be for WiMax providers to form an alliance similar to the current wireless telephony companies to allow access to any nearby WiMax network. Even if this is the case, it will be some time before coverage using WiMax is available in all metropolitan areas.

Enderle is hopeful that only good will come from the roll-out.

"WiMax is going to help a lot because it will probably be the next big thing to drive down the cost of data access and, if they can maintain little latency, it could drive down the cost of voice access as well," Enderle predicts.

"Some companies you will likely see pop up are those that can take and integrate cellphones with the new corporate -infrastructure and allow users to move seamlessly between the range of environments. This is where Cisco is probably going to play a major role."

The ability to roam between cellular, WiMax and Wi-Fi networks without losing connections will be hard enough, but -developing the supporting infrastructure to evaluate the cheapest and best of the available connections and juggle the billing issues will be the true Holy Grail.

While a lot of attention has been given to smartphones, the PC remains the most powerful end-user device for most business users and the PC world is not giving up on ultraportables. Lenovo recently announced that its latest laptops will have Vodafone SIM card modules and management software built in, rather than being a separately charged-for accessory.

Also, the nature of the PC is changing. Low-cost ultra-thin and small-format PCs are becoming widely available while Ultra-Mobile PCs (UMPCs) or Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs, pen/touch-enabled computers that sit between the PDA and notebook PC in size) are becoming common. In February, Intel released a concept specification for a format called the Netbook.

In his blog, Paul Bergevin, vice president and general manager of Intel's Communication Group, described the Netbook category as "small laptops that are designed for wireless communication and access to the internet".

"They cost about [US]$250 (£134), making Netbooks a potentially disruptive and high-volume market segment," he explained. "Even though Netbooks won't be confused with full-featured laptops, my hunch is that tons of people around the world will be attracted to a low-cost machine that plugs them in. The Netbook will expand the -global PC market. By how much is a matter of conjecture."

The Netbook category is arguably a -retro-announcement because such machines already exist in the shape of the very successful Eee PC from Asus -- or even the old Psion Netbook from the 1990s. The Eee PC is a minimalist's dream in the PC world -- a machine with no bells or whistles. The sub-notebook has a screen typically around nine inches or less, uses up to 20GB of solid--state memory rather than a disk drive, and is suited to accessing internet-based applications. It is available in a very memory--efficient Linux version or a somewhat 'fatter' Windows XP version.

Analyst Enderle says: "The emerging devices you've got to watch are the Netbooks and the MIDs. These are devices that have potentially a full-on PC capability and are portable. The current models are likely to define the capability but not the size of the devices we're going to have in the future. These devices could be useful as a proxy for future smartphone devices and probably cut your costs rather dramatically in terms of notebook purchases and deployment because these devices can be substantially less expensive. These are the products that may define where the market is going. They are far more capable than smartphones and, when WiMax turns up, will provide a far more effective way to deploy a PC-like experience than an existing PC."

As more staff go mobile, the emphasis will be on small-format devices that can link to the internet and come close to replicating the experience of wired, desktop computing. Ultraportability of computing and communications may then emerge as the norm rather than a niche.