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The SCO Group 
on Thursday announced the availability of HipCheck, the latest offering from the company's Me Inc. mobile services division.
HipCheck is a mobile administration solution designed to monitor and manage Unix and Windows 
systems through Windows Mobile phones. The application combines system monitoring and alerts with secure mobile intervention, with the aim of helping technicians detect, diagnose and correct many common system problems quickly.
The software 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.
Constant Coverage
When 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 let the technician take preventative action.
The Lindon, Utah-based company said HipCheck's features lend themselves to situations where IT staff are limited or distributed, and where round-the-clock coverage is required.
"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 of SCO's platforms division.
Three Components
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 system's 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, according to SCO. HipCheck pricing varies based on the number of users, servers and period of time that the service is used on the Windows Mobile device. Fees range from US$10 to $18 per monitored system per month.
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