[IBM to act as a system integrator of Nokia's Mobiile VPN solution for Symbian OS-based mobile handsets worldwide.]

Espoo, Finland and Armonk, New York -- Nokia and IBM announced that they will together provide end-to-end secured business applications on advanced mobile handsets targeted at the enterprise market. IBM Global Services will act as a system integrator of Nokia's Mobile VPN solution for Symbian OS-based mobile handsets worldwide.

Nokia's Mobile VPN solution consists of Nokia Security Service Manager (NSSM) and Nokia Mobile VPN Client for secure over-the-air provisioning of Mobile VPN client software and policies for Nokia's Symbian OS-based mobile handsets. IBM Global Services will offer the Nokia solution to the fast growing enterprise market, fulfilling customer needs with a service portfolio that includes installation, maintenance, financing and consulting services.

Drawing on its extensive mobility expertise and leadership in the wired Internet security market, Nokia offers mobile security solutions to extend secure network infrastructure to mobile terminals. The Nokia Mobile VPN Client is a standards-based IPSec VPN client supporting both legacy and PKI authentication. NSSM is an open standard, over-the-air provisioning system for mobile security applications, such as the Nokia Mobile VPN Client and for third party applications in the future.

This open architecture underpins Nokia's ability to offer inspired, human centric and trusted technology. The solution allows advanced mobile handset and laptop users to share the same network security infrastructure for enterprise access. This provides advanced mobile handset connections with the high level of security and systems management capabilities that the enterprise customers have, today, in their traditional IT environment.

"A key component of setting up and maintaining a mobile workforce is securing information transactions from employees' mobile terminals to their corporate networks. This means that enterprises can be more productive and competitive while their employees can work smarter and more efficiently. Nokia is pleased to offer its new mobile security solutions which are enabling business-critical applications for the mobile enterprise world," adds Dan MacDonald, Vice President of Product Management & Marketing, Nokia Internet Communications.

IBM Global Services has extensive experience in designing and deploying reliable, secure and scalable wireless e-business applications for enterprises across numerous market sectors. Leveraging IBM's worldwide consulting and industry expertise, IBM customer implementations include field force and sales force solutions, wireless LAN, smart card and e-business to smart machine communications.

"IBM's customers tell us that security is of crucial importance as they mobilize their workforces to increase productivity and drive competitive advantage," said John Kirby, Vice President, Global, Wireless e-business Services, IBM. "By combining IBM Global Services expertise with Nokia's mobile security offerings, we can now offer customers new levels of VPN security. Over-the-air provisioning systems offer significant cost savings by reducing the maintenance work involved in installation of VPN clients and updating of security policies." This Nokia and IBM collaboration will accelerate business usage of advanced mobile handsets, increasing productivity in mobile work environments. The applications taking advantage of the secure mobile infrastructure include: - Personal productivity; calendar, messaging, groupware solutions and intranet access - Customer service; field service, workforce management and insurance claims processing - Sales force automation; order management and configuration tools - Operational productivity; maintenance services, parts ordering, field reporting, material management, shipment tracking

Mobile handsets are a logical extension to the traditional corporate IT infrastructure. This offering makes it possible for companies to integrate their mobile workers with wireless devices to their corporate processes securely. Also service providers, especially those who are linked with cellular business, can add the infrastructure security services in their enterprise service portfolio.

More...

Back to Headlines...