Secure Enterprise Information

First Calgary Savings is Calgary, Alberta's largest locally owned and operated financial institution. CEO, Dave Gregory was first to pioneer PDAs in the banking workplace. With the executive management team using various PDAs including Palm and Windows CE technologies, the IT department expressed concerns about data security and common synchronization to one enterprise server that could be managed centrally. Further, higher costs resulted from supporting the various sync software purchased for each device.

The solution was to find a mobile computing technology that could support encryption and synchronize data from any handheld or mobile device to a common corporate database for accurate and easy access. First Calgary Savings selected and implemented Extended Systems' XTNDConnect Server technology to enable management secure access to the corporate server to synchronize and retrieve changes to calendars, contact lists and e-mail.

The rest of this article is an interview with First Calgary Savings (www.1stcalgary.com) and Extended Systems (www.extendsys.com).

First Calgary Savings: Working anywhere with any handheld

Q: How do you see mobile handheld devices helping the banking industry do its job better? What are their biggest advantages and disadvantages?

Handheld devices keep us in touch, so that we can literally do our work from anywhere. It used to be that we were tied to desks, and if you weren't in the office, you were out of the loop. Now, business is easily handled remotely leading to increased member service, especially in the area of credit authorization.

Disadvantages? Only one: in some ways we no longer have the personal freedom to leave work at the office ­we can be reached anywhere. But we always have the option to turn the technology off.

Q: What were the biggest challenges you faced incorporating mobile devices into your business strategies?

Compatibility is a challenge when dealing with handheld devices. There may be different systems at home, at work and outside the business ­ but we are finding that the technology is converging and that this is becoming less and less of an issue.

There is also uncertainty when anyone buys a piece of technology that there may be a new improvement right around the corner, leaving what you purchased less functional in comparison.

Q: Why did you select Extended Systems to help you achieve your corporate goals?

At the time of our purchase decision, approximately one year ago, Extended Systems was the only solution that met all of First Calgary's security requirements and could accommodate both the Windows CE and Palm OS operating environments using NT authentication.

Q: What benefits have you noticed? Any unexpected benefits?

The Extended Systems solution has continued to meet our security and remote access needs. From a technical perspective, its ability to control access from a central server, rather than setting up the synching at each workstation, has greatly simplified remote access administration. The product has proven to be a flexible (one tool for all operating systems) and reliable solution. From a user perspective, the Extended Systems solution is easy to learn and convenient to use. We are quite happy with it.

Q: What are your future plans with mobile devices?

Voice mail, e-mail, Internet access, and banking are all converging so that in the next 12-18 months, we expect they will have stabilized into one outlet that will be truly functional for First Calgary's purposes.

Extended Systems: A cross-platform, out-of-the-box solution

Q: What is Extended Systems' XTNDConnect Server and what does it do?

XTNDConnect Server is a software solution that allows information such as e-mail, contacts, calendars, tasks and custom database information to be accessed and transferred, or synchronized, directly between mobile devices and the database servers where this information resides.

Q: You say that it provides IT departments much needed control over mobile devices. What is the control you're talking about and why is it needed?