We Know ‘ET Phone Home’. But What About ‘PC Phone Home’?

Dell recently announced upgrades to its ProSupport services focused around mobility offerings. My initial reaction was one of services for PCs, which are not critical to the enterprise's operation and hence outside of my area of interest.

But according to Dell more enterprises are equipping their employees with laptops. And with this trend, portions of the corporations' data are going mobile too. This presents some interesting challenges if laptops get lost or stolen. This world of heightened corporate governance and security puts a new perspective on these services and places them well and truly in the enterprise camp and so was worth further consideration.

One set of services that caught my eye were those to help track and recover laptops, and even remotely delete data, if a quick recovery is not an option and sensitive data is involved. GPS equipped Dell laptops with this service activated will work in a similar way to recovery services for cars, such as OnStar. The unit keeps track of its position via a GPS and can use the cellular network to call home and report its position. A signal can also be sent to the laptop to delete data, if required. Even non GPS capable laptops can call home. Whenever the lost or stolen laptop connects to the internet it can report in. Although without the GPS, it relies on data such as IP address, to be used in conjunction with good old policing, to track the unit down.

The technology is nothing new. It exists for cars and even cell phones, where for the latter, stolen units can be detected and disabled from the network. Therefore, the extension into computing is logical.

Dell generally does its homework and only tends to pursue opportunities it knows it has a good chance of doing volume business with.  And in the interests of balance, Dell is not the only company to offer such a service. These two factors indicate that this is a growing area of need in the industry.

Comments

[cheap computers]

In my opinion, Dell is not the only company to offer such a service.

[Computer Support]

Thanks so much... i came to know about it well through this info post.

[cheap computers]

My initial reaction was one of services for PCs, which are not critical to the enterprise's operation and hence outside of my area of interest.

[refurbished computers]

I hope the upgrades will bring some difference in customer services.