iOra Mobile Intranet provides secure delivery of
critical intranet content to remote disconnected
locations for SB, as Campbell McCracken reports
SmithKline Beecham (SB) has selected iOra Mobile
Intranet to make sure that those of its more remote
offices involved in pre-clinical drug tests can access
its intranet with a virtual 24-hour up-time.
For SB, it is important that staff working in all of
its locations have access to standard operating
procedures and protocols whenever they need it while
they are conducting pre-clinical safety studies. The
solution that IOra is providing to SB – iOra Mobile
Intranet – will ensure that these remote offices always
have access to up-to-date information.
One of SB’s intranet-based applications, SA-Docs,
delivers the procedures and protocols to all the staff
online. Dr Anil Dhiri, senior informatics analyst within
the safety assessment department at SmithKline Beecham,
commented: "Access to the latest information is vital to
ensure that drug trials can be completed reliably and to
schedule." By using iOra Mobile Intranet, SB’s mobile
users can have access to the intranet content remotely,
even when there is no connection to the server.
IOra Mobile Intranet works by managing information
using a publisher metaphor. Information to be published
is placed in a single ‘Publication’ folder on the
intranet. For example, ‘Publication’ folders might be
created for ‘Sales’, ‘Legal’, Health & Safety’, and
so on. Initially these are also installed on the remote
PC.
Amendments to each publication can be published as
often as necessary. These are highly compressed for
high-speed transference over the internet. Software
running on the remote PCs transparently downloads the
amendment files and uses them to keep its version of the
publication in question in line with the content on the
intranet server. In the same way the information content
on other remote PCs and sites can be kept synchronised
with the same central server.
Paddy Falls, CEO and co-founder of iOra, commented:
"IOra Mobile Intranet is an ideal solution for
organisations like SmithKline Beecham where there is a
requirement for central control of content, with access
for remote and mobile employees who are intermittently
connected."
In addition to compressing the amendments, iOra
Mobile Intranet also encrypts them for secure
transmission over the internet. Sensitive information is
also password-protected to prevent unauthorised access.
"We have chosen iOra Mobile Intranet as it provides a
virtual 24-hour up-time for this important application,"
said Dhiri. "It will also allow us to manage the content
on a single server, and ensures that our intranet
content is securely accessible at all times."
IOra Mobile Intranet uses iOra’s patent-pending
Epsilon Technology. IOra claims that Epsilon can update
information over the internet up to 100 times faster
than competitive products, including those most commonly
used to update remote sites, for example transfer by
email or download by FTP. This is especially
advantageous when the remote link is a low-bandwidth or
wireless connection.
IOra also claims that the software is compatible with
all applications running on 32-bit Windows operating
systems, so no application changes or programming are
required to use it.