SCO Ships HipCheck Mobile Service for Proactive Mobile Administration of Servers and PCs
System administrators can proactively monitor and manage Windows and UNIX servers and PC systems 24/7 from any location through Windows Mobile phones
LINDON, Utah, October 5, 2006 -- The SCO Group, Inc. today announced the availability of HipCheck, the latest offering from the company's Me Inc. mobile services division that proactively monitors and manages UNIX and Windows systems through Windows Mobile phones. HipCheck is the only mobile administration solution on the market that combines system monitoring and alerts with secure mobile intervention. As a result, technicians are able to detect, diagnose and correct many common system problems much more quickly than before.
HipCheck allows business solution providers and IT system administrators to continually monitor the health of Windows and UNIX systems, setting alert thresholds for a wide range of parameters. The instant a condition reaches a threshold, an SMS or e-mail message is sent to an authorized technician's mobile phone. "Early warning" alerts can be set on certain parameters, a critical disk drive getting too full, for example, that lets the technician take preventative action.
"We believe HipCheck will satisfy the mobile access and support needs of many IT managers with ease," said Chris Woolfenden, technical director at Yanex, a leading U.K. information technology services firm. "Through its reliable and robust interface, IT staff will be able to access critical and desktop systems anywhere, anytime. The product's features ideally lend themselves to situations where IT staff are limited or distributed and where 24-hours-a-day, 365-days-a-year coverage is required. The cost savings using HipCheck can be considerable."
Proactive mobile administration represents a major advantage for any organization that provides system administration support services. The productivity and cost-savings benefits are particularly strong for organizations supporting systems in multiple locations. A technician working on a problem at one location can find out about and fix a problem at another location with minimal interruption and no response lag time for those systems.
"By allowing highly mobile system administrators to 'take the offensive,' HipCheck customers will see higher overall uptime, more productive users and lower maintenance costs," said Sandy Gupta, CTO and general manager, SCO Platforms Division. "This level of flexibility and anywhere/anytime responsiveness lets technicians multi-task far more effectively. They are now the first to find out about a situation, they spend less time diagnosing the root cause and, best of all, they can rectify the problem no matter where they happen to be."
HipCheck is made up of three components; HipCheck Agent, Client and Mobility Server. HipCheck Agent is software installed on each system that needs to be monitored. The Agent software monitors each systems hardware and system status, and then communicates with the Mobility Server. The HipCheck Client is a graphical user interface that enables an authorized user to efficiently monitor systems and perform administrative actions such as responding to alerts and correcting any problems that may arise. The Client runs natively on Windows Mobile 5.0 phones and on Windows desktops. The Mobility Server acts as an intermediary between Agents and Clients. This feature ensures user authentication as well as secure data transfers.
HipCheck is the latest addition to SCO's Me Inc. family of high performance mobile solutions. A sampling of HipCheck capabilities and benefits of its system monitoring, real-time alerts, and command execution include:
Memory usage and available free memory
Hard disk usage, available disk space, and file systems
Receive alerts if disk space falls below pre-set thresholds
Monitor and start, stop or restart all services
Monitor the status of print jobs with the ability to resume, pause or cancel
Monitor users and control user IDs, passwords, and account access
Availability and Pricing
HipCheck is now available worldwide and customers may open a free trial account at www.hipcheck.me-inc.com by entering account information and accepting the end user license agreement when presented. Free trial accounts are valid for 14 days.
HipCheck pricing varies based on the number of users, servers and period of time that the service is used on the Windows Mobile device. Pricing ranges from $10 to $18 per monitored system per month.
To order the HipCheck service, contact your local SCO reseller or call 1-800-726-8649 in the U.S. or visit http://www.sco.com/worldwide to contact the nearest SCO sales office. More information on HipCheck may be obtained by visiting http://www.sco.com/products/hipcheck.
About SCO
The SCO Group (Nasdaq: SCOX) is a leading provider of UNIX software technology and mobile services, offering SCO OpenServer for small to medium business, UnixWare for enterprise applications, and Me Inc. for mobile services. SCO's highly innovative and reliable solutions help millions of customers grow their businesses everyday, from SCO OpenServer on main street to UnixWare on Wall Street, and beyond. SCO owns the core UNIX operating system, originally developed by AT&T/Bell Labs and is the exclusive licensor to UNIX-based system software providers.
Headquartered in Lindon, Utah, SCO has a worldwide network of thousands of resellers and developers. SCO Global Services provides reliable localized support and services to partners and customers. For more information on SCO products and services, visit http://www.sco.com.
SCO, SCO OpenServer, Me Inc. and the associated SCO logo, are trademarks or registered trademarks of The SCO Group, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. UNIX and UnixWare are registered trademarks of The Open Group. Windows and Windows Mobile are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.