Perlego (www.perlego.com) is a US-based company that offers a complete, hosted, web-based device management solution for Windows Mobile, Symbian and Palm devices – no server hardware is required and there is no setup lead time: you can literally be good to go virtually immediately.

I admit that I had not come across this company myself until recently, and the Perlego web site is an exercise in ‘marketing-eze’ which tells you very little of any use for such a large amount of text and expensive flash animation, but in light of the demise of the Nokia Intellisync platform (http://blog.devicewire.com/blogs/devicewire/archive/2008/09/29/nokia-to-cease-all-development-work-on-intellisync.aspx), I thought it would be wise to examine alternatives -  so I thought I’d give you the inside scoop on a potential candidate. Indeed Perlego themselves have been quick to realise an opportunity and at the time of writing there is a banner on their web site advertising a special introductory offer to existing Nokia Intellisync customers.

Read on…

 

 

Features

 

Perlego Device Management comprises three primary components:

 

·         Perlego Backup

·         Perlego Update

·         Perlego Remote

 

Perlego Backup does what it says on the tin – it allows the user to backup the contents of their PDA (either all of it, or selective contents) to a secure online storage area, and restore that backup at a later date if required.

 

Perlego Update allows the administrator to ‘publish’ files to a secure online storage area and allow users access to those files, be they documents, images, applications, or any other file type.

 

Perlego Remote works silently in the background and allows the administrator to send commands to the client device transparently to the user to perform virtually any change on the client device that you can think of.

 

I will look at all of these features in more detail.

 

 

Infrastructure

 

The entire Perlego solution is web-based. The client is installed onto the device via the browser on the client itself – the web site sending the correct version of the client software to the device based on the type and version of the browser used.

All administration of the solution is also done via a hosted web interface.

All client-server communications are secured by 128-bit SSL encryption.

All client-server communications are also ‘connection-agnostic’, meaning that the solution can be used over GPRS, 3G, WiFi, or via a tethered connection to a PC.

 

 

Licensing

 

When you sign up for an account with Perlego, your company is set up as a ‘Domain’ on the server. You are given an administrative login to the admin web interface, and a set number of client licenses.

Client licenses are valid for 365 days from the moment the client is installed on the mobile device, after which time they become inactive.

I will look at the admin web interface in a moment, but it is important to note that the principle strength of Perlego (a unique strength to the best of my knowledge), is that your entire mobile device fleet can be up and running with a fully-featured device management solution in the time it takes for you to ring Perlego and be assigned your licenses: there is no hardware setup involved at all. This is an attractive model both to the Perlego and the customer: the customer has no hardware setup, maintenance or backup costs; and Perlego have an ongoing revenue stream based on an annual renewal process.

 

 

Client Installation

 

For the rest of this article, I will focus on using Windows Mobile as the client device type, but the same features are available for Symbian devices also as well as Palm, and I have it on good authority that the roadmap also has the iPhone and the Google Android platform on it.

 

Installation is very simple, and does not require that the device be connected to a PC. Simply open a browser on the device and connect to http://tryperlego.com

This link is the same one to use on all client devices – the web site detects which browser is being used and displays the appropriate download link accordingly.

The following screen will be displayed:

 

 

Click on the link to download the Perlego Mobile Suite, you will be prompted to download and run the installer file:

 

 

After a few minutes the software will be installed:

 

 

Two icons will be added to the Programs folder:

 

·         Perlego Backup

·         Perlego Updates

 

 

When running the Perlego software for the first time you will be prompted to enter a license code. It is this license code that identifies the device with your Domain.

This license can either be emailed to the user, or read out to them over the phone. Alternatively, devices can be ‘pre-registered’ on the server provided that you know the IMEI number of the device.

 

 

Perlego Backup

 

Selecting the Perlego Backup icon launches the backup application:

 

 

The Backup and Restore service runs independently of and is separate from the Update and Remote services.

Several options can be configured to refine the amount of data that is backed up:

 

 

A full backup can be selected, which will copy the entire contents of the device, or alternatively specific applications and folders can be selected:

 

·         Contacts

·         Calendar

·         My Documents

·         SIM address book

 

He advanced options all the user to exclude specific folders from the full backup, as well as specific file types:

 

 

 

Once all of the options have been configured, the first time you run the Backup application you will be prompted to create an account with the online storage area and enter a username and password of your choice:

 

  

 

If you already have a username and password, you can skip this step and enter your login details.

Selecting the Restore application will prompt you for the same username and password, and will display a list of available backups to choose from.

Backup performed from the same device are incremental, therefore whilst the first backup may take a while and upload a large amount of data to the server, subsequent backups will only upload those files that have been added or modified.

 

Any backups that are uploaded from a device can be restored to any other device – independent of their type. Therefore, it is possible to backup your contacts from a Windows Mobile device, and then restore those same contacts to a Symbian device should you change device type.

 

I would classify the Backup option as ‘nice to have’ but also potentially costly: there is no means of restricting how users initiate a backup or a restore operation. If a user was to initiate a full device backup over a 3G connection while roaming the resulting cost incurred could be staggering. The ability to restrict operations to a high-speed connection only will be available in a future release of the software.

Backup can be disabled altogether on the client device via the Perlego Remote feature, which I will look at in a moment.

 

 

Perlego Update

 

The Perlego Update feature allows the administrator to publish files to client devices from the server. Whilst the Backup feature is a separate component that works on a user login basis, both the Perlego Update and Perlego Remote features are configured by the administrator via the web interface.

The web interface is accessed via a web browser using the same link as that used on the client devices to download and install the client – http://tryperlego.com

This link can only be accessed from Internet Explorer, no other browsers are supported for the admin interface (because if you use a different browser, the web site will think that you are accessing it from a client device and get confused).

When accessing this site from IE, you will be prompted for a username and password rather than being displayed the client download link.

 

The ‘look’ of the web interface can be customised in as much as you can add your company logo in the top right hand corner of the screen and can customise a colour scheme. I have it on good authority that the GUI for the interface is going to be overhauled radically as it is currently a bit austere and far from intuitive, see what you think of this:

 

 

Nice isn’t it!

 

I will go through each of the elements of the admin interface as they apply to the different features available.

 

Perlego Update requires that ‘Categories’ be created on the server. Each category also requires that an ‘Icon’ be uploaded to the server to represent that category on the client device.

The procedure is as follows.

In the admin interface, expand Content Distribution --> Publish To Catalog --> Icon Groups à New:

 

 

The following window will be displayed:

 

 

Enter a name for the Icon. Your company domain will be listed automatically.

3 different icon categories exist – these are available in different sizes for the different client types that are supported.

Browse to where you have saved the desired icon file, select the target client device types from the list and click Insert to upload the new icon.

The Icon group will now be listed:

 

 

You can now create a Category. This is done within Content Distribution --> Publish To Catalog --> Categories:

 

 

Enter a name for the Category as well as a Description. The text that is entered in the Description field is not viewable to the user on the client device, this is to identify the category to the administrator.

 

The Display Priority field allows you to specify where on the client the Category is displayed. This is only relevant if you have more than one category defined. It is possible to have up to 9999 categories defined!

 

Select the Icon you defined earlier and associate it with the Category.

 

Now you need to upload the files to the server that you want to be available in the Category.

 

This is done within Content Distribution --> Publish To Catalog --> Publish Content:

 

 

Select the Category to which the file is to be published. Select the device type.

Enter a name for the Publication. Specify the Display Priority (this works in the same way as the Categories, but defines where within the Category the publication is displayed).

Browse to where the file is saved that you wish to upload.

The Unique File Identifier field is a bit misleading. Unless you enter some text in this field, when the file is downloaded to the client it will be saved with a name of 12345678901234567890.xx (where this is a randomly generated file name). If you want the file to be saved on the client with a specific name, you need to enter this filename in this field.

 

Any text you enter in the Description field IS viewable to the user on the client device.

 

Scroll down, the following will be displayed:

 

 

You can specify where on the device the file is downloaded to. From the drop-down menu there are a number of pre-defined locations available, such as ‘My Documents’, ‘Program Files’, etc, or you can add a new location which will be created on the client device automatically.

 

It is also possible to define an installation path. This is largely irrelevant as if you are sending say, a CAB application package to a Windows Mobile device, it is the CAB file that defines where the resulting application is installed to. This path defined here is largely just a temporary installation file location path.

 

If you want the file that you are sending to the device to be opened once it is successfully downloaded, select ‘Open’ from the Command menu. If the file that you are sending to the client device is an executable, and there are specific parameters that need to be defined when the executable is run, select Add New and enter the correct syntax for those parameters.

 

Select the Icon that you want the publication to have on the client device.

 

Select the client device types that you want the publication to be available to.

 

Scroll down, the following will be displayed:

 

 

You can select which languages the package should be available to (based on the language of the operating system installed on the client device).

 

You can also specify Filters and Families that the publication is a member of – I will look at these in a moment as they add some powerful intelligence to the system that it is important to be aware of.

 

You can also a specify a date range within the which the package is available for, after which the package will not be.

 

Specify the delivery options for the publication and click Publish.

 

Once the file has been uploaded, it will be assigned a unique identifier:

 

 

This value is relevant for the Remote feature which I will look at in a moment.

 

Now let’s see how this looks on the client device.

 

Running the Perlego Update application on the client device will display the following screen:

 

 

Select the option to Check For Updates. The client will contact the server (provided that the device has a connection to the Internet):

 

  

 

The categories that you have defined will be listed, using the icons that you uploaded. Opening the category will list the content that you defined:

 

  

 

Selecting that content will automatically download it and execute it based on the options you defined as the administrator.

 

 

Filters

 

Filters allow the administrator to restrict access to specific content publications based on device criteria.

When the Perlego client software first connects to the server, it will upload certain information about the client device. It is not possible to view or report on this information to view the status of your mobile fleet, but it is possible to add intelligence to the way in which published packages are delivered to that fleet.

 

These criteria include:

 

·         Build

·         Carrier

·         CarrierID

·         ConnectionType

·         DeviceType

·         DeviceUID

·         IMEI

·         IMSI

·         Language

·         Locale

·         OS

·         OSVersion

·         Processor

·         Version

 

 

These values can be set to ‘equal’, ‘begin with’ or ‘contain’ the text specified:

 

 

For example, if you want to send a hotfix package to Windows Mobile devices that use the Vodafone network, you could specify the 5-digit carrier ID for the Vodafone network in a new Filter and specify that filter in the properties of the Content Publication.

 

It is important to note that the administrator needs to know what information to put in the Value field – these options are not pre-populated as they are with other solutions.

 

 

Domains, Users and Licenses

 

When your account is created for you by Perlego, your company will be assigned a Domain. It is then possible for you to create sub-domain of your own domain – as many as you like. As the administrator of your domain, you will be able to fully administer any sub-domains of your domain.

It is also possible to create different levels of administrative logins to your domain, or any sub-domains of your domain.

This is ideal for the service reseller model. The only thing you cannot do is generate licenses. Perlego will assign you a set number of licenses, but you can then transfer some or all of these licenses to any sub domain that you have control over.

 

 

SMS Messaging

 

 

It is possible to send SMS messages to one, or all members of your client device fleet from the server.

These SMS messages are free and can be delivered anywhere in the world. Whilst the cost of this message delivery is borne by Perlego, and messages are not explicitly monitored, if Perlego were to notice a suspiciously large volume of messages from a specific domain and discovered that you were letting everyone know that the new series of Top Gear starts tonight then they would probably take a dim view of that!

 

 

Perlego Remote

 

As the song goes, I have saved the best till last. Perlego Remote is where this solution starts to get more interesting from a DM perspective.

 

The Perlego Remote component is not visible on the client device, it operates in the background. This component allows the administrator to send and execute commands on the device without user interaction. On a Windows Mobile device, these commands might contain XML provisioning scripts to create and edit registry values – effectively allowing you to control any aspect of the client device that can be controlled via the Registry: which on a Windows Mobile device is pretty much everything.

 

The Remote feature has its own section in the admin interface:

 

 

Commands are created by selecting Command Library --> New:

 

 

Enter a name for the command.

Select an Action Type for the command:

 

 

A ‘reset’ action type will soft reset the device.

An ‘execute’ action will send a specific file to the device and run it – this is where the unique file identifier field comes into play which we saw earlier and is specified in the Application ID field.

A ‘config’ action will send an XML provisioning script to the device – this is defined in the Parameter field.

Other action types are available but are beyond the scope of this introduction.

 

The Acknowledgement field allows the administrator to define that the client should communicate to the server that the command has been received successfully.

 

For example, creating a config command with the following parameters:

 

<wap-provisioningdoc>

 <characteristic type="Sync">

 <characteristic type="Connection">

 <parm name="Server" value="mail.domain.co.uk"/>

 <parm name="User" value="jamesl"/>

 <parm name="Domain" value="DOMAIN"/>

 <parm name="AllowSSLOption" value="1"/>

 </characteristic>

 <characteristic type="Settings">

 <parm name="EmailAgeFilter" value="1"/>

 <parm name="MailBodyTruncation" value="512"/>

 <parm name="OffPeakFrequency" value="60"/>

 <parm name="PeakFrequency" value="60"/>

 <parm name="SendMailItemsImmediatel y" value="1"/>

 <parm name="SyncWhenRoaming" value="0"/>

 </characteristic>

 <characteristic type="Calendar">

 <parm name="Enabled" value="1"/>

 </characteristic>

 <characteristic type="Contacts">

 <parm name="Enabled" value="0"/>

 </characteristic>

 <characteristic type="Mail">

 <parm name="Enabled" value="1"/>

 </characteristic>

 </characteristic>

 </wap-provisioningdoc>

 

Will configure a Windows Mobile device with Server ActiveSync push email settings:

 

 

A sequence of commands can be grouped into a Command Set, to form a powerful script operation.

 

Once a command or a command library has been created, it can be ‘pushed’ to a device via the Send Command interface:

 

 

This will cause an SMS message to be sent to the device or group of devices specified. Again, there is no charge for this SMS message. The message itself is not displayed on the screen of the client device, instead it is received by the remote listener application on the device and actioned accordingly.

 

It is up to the administrator to know how to format and create the XML provisioning scripts and enter them manually into the web interface.

There are many examples of such scripts on the Microsoft web site:

 

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms894922.aspx

 

You can view the status of issued commands in the Command Queue view, and the Command History view shows what command shave bee issued in the past.

 

Devices can be Deactivated via the Deactivate Device menu – which causes devices to no longer be able to contact the content server. No information is erased from the device by this procedure – if you wanted to ‘kill’ a device, you would need to issue a hard reset command via an XML provisioning script.

 

 

Summary

 

To summarise then, Perlego is a feature-rich device management solution with no administrative overhead from a setup, maintenance or backup perspective and can be deployed in literally the length of time it takes to acquire licenses, be assigned a login and to publish your content and scripts.

Publishing and creating those scripts is a manual process that requires in-depth knowledge of the operating systems in use on the part of the administrator…but assistance with that side of the solution is available from yours truly :)