SMB IT | Curtis Franklin » Interop: Alcatel-Lucent Super Card, I WANT One of These

May 22, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Interop: Alcatel-Lucent Super Card, I WANT One of These

TAGS: SMB Hardware

Got this by glomming onto one of Brian's interviews--hey, I'm slimy that way.

Alcatel-Lucent has gone and come out with the Swiss Army knife of PC Card modems. It's called the OmniAccess 3500 Nonstop Laptop Guardian, and it's a standard Type II PC Card with a lot of stuff jammed in there. Short list:

* CPU
* Between 256MB and 1GB of combo Flash and RAM
* Its own power source
* a 3G broadband wireless modem
* a GPS
* Hardware crypto acceleration

Better yet, the geeks at Bell Labs (this is the first product invented entirely in the old Lucent labs and then owned and marketed by Alcatel's enterprise group) actually put real thought into combining these features for best effect. Examples:

(1) It allows for direct device monitoring and remote help even if the notebook is off because the OmniAccess has its own power supply and network connection.

(2) Has its own VPN certificates and encryption keys. This means that (a) the OmniAccess can force users to VPN into the corporate network whenever they access the Internet--means your users are ALWAYS behind your firewall and monitoring devices. It also means (b) that it can encrypt and authenticate data on the notebook's hard drive. If the box gets lost, you can wipe the keys remotely--again, because the OmniAcc has its own 3G card and power source.

(3) The GPS can be used on its own or as a lojack to recover the notebook if it gets lost (and the thief leaves the card installed).

(4) They're using the installed RAM for things like convenient backup and patching. Since most incremental backups are only about 40MB a day, the card get grab these during working hours and then update a remote backup server at night--all by itself. Same with patching. The card can download your patches while visions of sugar plums are bouncing off your head and then install those patches the next time you boot up.

Alcatel-Lucent is saying that they've opened the APIs for this thing to academic institutions and are getting good feedback. Lots of stuff being done on things like downloading emails onto the card while the computer is off and then doing a fast import when it's turned on -- or even allowing access via the new SideShow windows on the outside of some of the newer Vista notebooks.

Downsides? No Mac support as yet and none planned unless loads of Apple users start female canining. Vista is the next OS in the queue with Linux possible very quickly after that because the OmniAccess already runs on an embedded Penguin kernel.

Other downside is cost. Alcatel-Lucent's trying to keep this down, but they're going to be largely at the mercy of the various evil empires; out of the gate that's Verizon since the intial OmniAcc versions will run only EVDO rev A. Means you'll need to pay the monthly for an EVDO data plan, a service charge of probably $15/mo on top of that and then some kind of charge for the hardware (TBD).

Then again, for companies worried about road warrior reliability and data security among mucho other nifties, that doesn't sound like too much to ask.

The OmniAccess 3500 Nonstop Laptop Guardian is going into late beta now; Brian's going to get a chance to review the thing later this summer and the evil empires should be offering it for sale sometime in the Fall.

View high-rez image of the OmniAccess 3500 (1.6MB)

Posted by Oliver Rist on May 22, 2007 01:17 PM

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