What's wireless got to do with anything?

WAP may not have changed the landscape of mobile data but as wireless technology begins to converge with mainstream corporate IT, businesses need to reconsider a wireless strategy

Last year's wireless Internet blitz unsurprisingly left many businesses rather cold. Wireless operators' consumer-focused marketing tended to place the new technologies miles away from the world of corporate IT: it was all about using wireless to access fun, useful content on the Internet.

But this was misleading, because the new technologies have much to offer businesses: namely access to content within their own firewalls.

Wireless data has been a crucial tool for businesses in certain sectors for some time, and they have invested in early, proprietary technologies just to get the job done.

But standardisation and fast packet-switched public networks are now making it easier and cheaper than ever to add wireless capabilities to mainstream business applications. This means that wireless data is no longer the privilege of specialists. It will increasingly be considered as a standard channel that organisations can use to keep vital information flowing despite disconnections in modern working life.

Addressing the business challenges of mobility
New technologies and global competition have done much to change organisational working patterns. The need for ever-closer cooperation with customers, partners and suppliers has certainly increased mobility among executives and knowledge workers.

But workers who have always been mobile - policemen, service engineers and warehouse staff, for example - are also facing change. The increasing use

"Wireless data is no longer the privilege of specialists. It will increasingly be considered as a standard for keeping vital information flowing" Source: Ovum

of technology to track and sustain organisational efficiency has actually created new demands for them to be brought back into the fold.

If mobile computing technology can support both of these groups in their everyday roles, it will also support the underlying business benefits of mobility: increased speed of response, greater efficiency and customer satisfaction. It can also support "soft" goals such as employee motivation, allowing mobile workers to stay in touch with the information backbone of their organisation.

Mapping mobility onto wireless
The groups most likely to consider wireless-enablement are organisations with large mobile workforces or with many mobile or remote assets. But it is not always clear whether their needs necessarily translate to wireless.

Despite the terms "mobile" and "wireless" being pretty much interchangeable, the two are different; one does not absolutely require the other. Technologies supporting mobility include dial-up access, docking stations and cradles for laptops or handheld devices (fixed methods), and wireless Lan and Bluetooth (short-range wireless methods). All of these are substitutes for access via public wireless networks.

So when is "true" wireless access the best option? There are several factors to consider here, including:

1. Return on investment

2. Range of mobility

3. The importance of workers' communication needs

Return on investment
Most organisations have workers who are mobile in some sense. But investment in wireless-enablement must provide identifiable productivity benefits, rather than just convenience. This is most likely to happen where mobile workers in question form a significant proportion of the workforce, especially if they are revenue generators. These groups include field sales and field service personnel, transport workers, and consultants who work from client sites.

On the other hand, an organisation may not think it worthwhile investing simply for the sake of a few travelling senior executives if good substitutes, such as fixed dial-up access, are available.

Range of mobility
Campus-based employees (for instance, working in warehouses or hospitals) might carry out most functions away from a fixed network connection, but they may not need the roaming facilities provided by wireless. A short-range solution (such as wireless Lan) or fixed docking facilities may be more appropriate.

Roaming workers - those who move within a much larger and unpredictable area - are much better served by the ubiquitous connectivity provided by public wireless networks.

The importance of workers' communication needs
A user who only needs to connect once a day may find it perfectly feasible to do so from a fixed connection at home. But this might be impossible for a user who needs to connect five times a day from the road.

In the case of companies with remote or mobile assets, the key questions are whether the assets move, and what sort of network connection is physically possible.

Moving assets - buses and lorries, for example - require wireless connections, but if the connection is imperative even in areas with poor coverage, then satellite might be a more reliable (if expensive) option. For fixed assets - traffic lights, speed cameras or oil rigs, for example - a wireless or fixed connection could be used, depending on the physical circumstances. Therefore, key sectors for wireless-enablement would be transport and logistics.

Wireless-enabling business applications
Business applications are sophisticated tools allowing users to access corporate data, and manipulate, create and share data. When we add wireless to the equation, we are opening up an extra channel for two-way information flows between the corporate information store and application users. Wireless works in partnership with other channels, such as PC-Lan, the Web, voice, non-wireless mobile channels, or even manual paper-based channels.

The wireless channel is uniquely useful. It makes the flow of information possible, not only from remote locations, but also when the user is physically moving - something that non-wireless mobile channels cannot do. It also provides the ability to locate a mobile user.

But wireless is not, and can never be, a universal channel for ubiquitous access to business applications. Many applications do not need to be accessed by mobile users. More importantly, some provide services simply inappropriate to an unstable, unpredictable mobile working environment and to devices with small screens.

Understanding the pattern of information flow
Although wireless will never be the only channel, there is a good chance that it will be the most important for some applications. Some information flows will be suitable to the wireless channel and some will not, but there is often hidden synergy between them - a reason why wireless should never be considered in isolation.

Information flows that are most suited to the wireless channel tend to be time-critical and comprised of relatively simple data which can be accessed easily in the constraints of the mobile working environment, without requiring a great deal of analysis on the part of the mobile worker. Messaging and alerts, for example, can support general communication and unstructured data.

But where wireless data becomes more valuable than just a way of making life easier for mobile workers is in the case of two-way information flow, where mobile users and those at the central location rely heavily on each other's frequent input: workers back at base can have access to reliable, up-to-date information from the field. Applications in this category include process-rich packages, such as field sales, field service automation and supply management.