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Avoid wireless backup problems: steal the hard disk!

Faced with notebook users who insisted on storing vital corporate data on their hard disks out in the field, T-Mobile's insurance client, LVM in Germany, solved the security problem by simply removing the hard disks.

Wireless data, especially over the cellular GPRS networks, is notoriously hard to backup. Insurer LVM, Germany's largest car underwriter, found that its mobile insurance agents were making records of insurance quotes onto their own hard disks. Then they were failing to update the central database, says consultant Hannes Haendel of T-Mobile.

Haendel's presentation to this year's Mobile Convergence conference here in Monaco, showed how an IT solution was created using GPRS - but revealed that providing wireless links was not enough.

"We had a distributed database problem. We found that if users have a hard disk, they will store the data on it. So we installed a special purpose IBM notebook, without hard disks; just Linux embedded, the application (also embedded) and a wireless link to head office. All data had to be saved over GPRS to the central database. It worked."

His presentation was one of several IT director "experiences with wireless" shared at the seminar this week, in which there were few common themes. But all of them did reveal how difficult it was to get wireless applications integrated into the normal IT function, with shortage of cash, and expertise, being the biggest hurdles to clear.

Hospital consultant Dr William Gransden of Royal Bournemouth Hospital, described a solution to a "laboratory clinician" wireless communications setup, designed to speed up the identification of emergency infections; he too said that a major problem was the need to provide truly expert support for technophobic users - specifically, senior consultants.

The conference ends this afternoon.