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Cloud computing on a SIM card - Mobiu releases USB dongle

Five gig of memory isn't that much, compared with the 180 G you get with most laptops; but it may be enough to make you entirely mobile with your data, according to The Key Revolution.

The company yesterday launched Mobiu, which it calls a portable office solution - and they say it will be available from early July. Key to the device is the gold-plated security inherent in the ordinary mobile phone SIM card.

Effectively, it's just a smart-card access key, giving access to the cloud of the Internet, said CEO Adrian Burholt - who is leading the almost-totally ex-Vodafone team which is behind the launch. And the technology is SIM based, he admits, because it's based on technology that Vodafone originally developed for micro-payments on mobile phones.

"Micro-payments, M-Pay in particular, is going like a train in places like Kenya," said Burholt. "But for some reason, it hasn't caught on in the West. Nonetheless, the security model we're using is chip-and-PIN, and very secure, and that's what this market needs."

It's another "cloud computing" idea, of course. The notion is that you never need to have any IT hardware of your own. All the processing power, all the storage, and all the communications you need - it's Out There.

Unlike some Clouds, the Mobiu cloud really has no local processing. The only bit of hardware you get is a USB stick, with a SIM card in it - exactly the same sort of SIM card you'd get in a mobile phone. And it has enough circuitry to check the security against your PIN, and to talk to the Cloud of the Internet, where your storage and processing are.

All Mobiu cares about, really, is your security. "The SIMAssured chip and pin device enables tamper proof access to files, data and applications from any online computer running Windows XP and Vista, leaving no trace behind, and with the ability to 'remote kill' the device if it is detected on an online PC, preventing unwanted third party access to information."

File sharing and collaborative working is enabled by using the shared workspaces or "MobiRooms" with a starter pack of 5 GB of secure storage provided per Mobiu subscription. That will cost you well over ten pounds a week first year, just over half that for the second year (£135 plus VAT including the device is the purchase price).

The question which only the market can answer is: "Is it enough?"

If someone offered me a laptop with 5G of disk and no better than ADSL speeds to access files, I'd be underwhelmed. But of course, the comparison isn't fair, because clearly, you can have the option to store stuff on a local disk; you only upload the stuff you need to work on.

Competing with this idea are things like the (beta) Windows Live Mesh, shared workspace.

Alternatively, you can look at Portable Apps which gives you a USB disk, and all the startup files you'll ever need to install them; and then treats the computer you  plug into as a processing resource. All relevant data travels with you on your stick. And a 32 G USB drive is very small, and not very expensive.

The drawback is: someone has to convert the application into a portable version, so that it is happy to live entirely on the mobile drive, without storing scratchpad essentials on the PC disk. If you update, it has to update the USB stick. Oh, and it's nearly all Linux, so far.

Mobiu doesn't offer you Microsoft apps. Instead, it offers "compatible" apps to allow you to work on your Excel or Word or PowerPoint data files. Probably, this will work well enough.

Mobiu is to be sold through Mobile and IT distribution channels, network operators, retailers, OEM customers, and direct from the website, www.mobiu.com

Services included with Mobiu are:

More details from  The Key Revolution (www.thekeyrevolution.com - a company created by a team of ex-Vodafone employees to license and commercialise technology patented by Vodafone.