A long time ago, laptops were invented so that people could work while out of the office, this was meant to improve productivity. People would upload & download data/email via modems, then broadband or wired connections. Nowadays in the most progressive countries there is free Wifi everywhere. However, the portability of data has caused a problem, security or lack of security. I just read that a UK organisation as documented here http://www.silicon.com/publicsector/0,3800010403,39169759,00.htm has laptops for some of their employees, but will not let them remove these from office, similar problems are ocuring all over the world, military organisations are often losing or misplacing their laptops, data from disks is being lost.

So my logic is such, we have mobile devices which are not meant to be mobile, so why don't we have a more secure and cost effective work/IT model. Historically, organisations went from terminals (keyboard + screen) with no data, desktop (large PC) with distributed data, laptop/notebook with lots of data. Now, we have so much important data on these devices that they are becoming a liability. Due to, too much sensitive data being lost and therefore by implication, possibly could fall into the "wrong" hands or the data could be missused.

As always we have answers or options for these.

1) Encrypted data on all laptops
2) Thin desktop with no data or as we say, stateless devices.

As a Sun employee, we have solutions for both of these.

1) Encrypt data on disk and keep it's integrity, ZFS this is open source and many companies are adopting this outside of UNIX,
2) Companies gave people laptops on their desks, but as they are never allowed to remove them. They are the wrong device, you probably would feel better if the device has to remain at work with a big screen and a larger more ergonomic keyboard. Hence the SunRay.

So all the security people scratching their heads need look no further. Remember the SunRay can run Windows and Unix based applicaitons. Linux to me is Unix, so that includes Linux too.

Picture of the SunRay here: http://www.sun.com/sunray/sunray2

Now I did talk about this a while ago. "A ray or enlightenment in a dark IT quagmire", cost $249 for a Sunray, Suntan lotion not included. http://blogs.sun.com/ValdisFilks/entry/wyse_copies_sunray_idea