Mobility VAR Handheld PCs has won its first deal deploying the technology of vendor partner Excitor at the Vale of Glamorgan Council.

Excitor specialises in mobile device management and its flagship product is Dynamic Mobile Exchange (DME) software. Handheld PCs signed up with the vendor last month and equipped the council with DME to manage and secure 100 mobile devices used by staff.

Handheld PCs founder Pierre Lams said the council wanted to enable push email for Microsoft Exchange on workers’ mobile devices. “They had the products to enable this, but a key thing for all local authorities is security,” he said.

The government’s Code of Connection sets out guidelines for the security of local authorities’ networks. Lams claimed concerns about the safety of sensitive data could help drive business for resellers.

“We have seen news reports of laptops being lost by government officials,” he said. “It is important to have a secure way in which to manage remote devices and encrypt data so that, if the hardware is lost, the data is useless.”

Bob Tarzey, service director for analyst Quocirca, said: “Mobility now applies to information workers and blue-collar workers. There is going to be a lot of investment from the public sector.”