As mobile and wireless technology adoption continues
apace, the technology itself will develop steadily over the next
five years, rather than leaping ahead, analysts have
predicted.
As a result, businesses will benefit from more mature and secure
wireless technologies that interoperate better and run
faster.
Ellen Daley, vice-president at Forrester Research, said that about
60% of companies have deployed a wireless network in some form. But
by 2011 as many as 90% will have rolled out the technology, with
implementations running deeper into their organisations.
Daley said wireless systems would not replace wired networks in
this timeframe, except for in some branch offices and public
buildings. “We do not think wireless will be the primary network
for most companies; it will be a required secondary network that
introduces mobility. Nothing will be as reliable as a wired
network,” she said.
The business world in 2011 will have a lot of complementary
wireless networks, said Daley, and these might include corporate
Wi-Fi networks, municipal mesh networks, which are a confluence of
wireless hotspots, 3.5G mobile carrier networks, and smaller Wi-Fi
implementations.
“As a result, the client technology will have to adapt to be able
to find the right network that the business wants to use – which
will be managed by a chip in a computer or a phone, to find the
best wireless signal. This will be dynamic,” said Daley, meaning
the process is automatic. But she added that businesses would have
to work out how to manage the provision of their wireless networks
to get the most effective usage in terms of cost and traffic.
Mark Blowers, senior research analyst at Butler Group, said that
within five years, there would be the widespread ability to link
together wireless hotspots and to broaden Wi-Fi coverage for
roaming users.
Wireless mesh networks use mesh networking (the ability to hop
across nodes to maintain a connection) over a wireless local area
network. The benefits of the technology are that nodes can be used
to repeat a signal, so networks can span large distances.
Wireless mesh networks are also extremely reliable, as each node is
connected to several other nodes, and the infrastructure tends to
be much cheaper than traditional wired networking equipment.
However, there are more than 70 competing schemes for routing
packets across mesh networks, and standards body the IEEE is
developing a set of standards – under the title 802.11s – to define
an architecture and protocol for what it terms ESS mesh
networking.
In addition, said Blowers, in five years, Wi-Fi and Wimax will run
side by side and interoperate better. Wi-Fi refers to IEEE 802.11
standards, incorporating the fast 802.11i protocol, and 802.11.n,
which is even faster and more secure, said Blowers.
Conversely, Wimax (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access)
refers to the IEEE 802.16 standards. It is similar to Wi-Fi in
concept, but has features designed to improve its performance and
allow it to be used over much greater distances.
Wimax provides high-throughput broadband connections over long
distances, and can be used for high-speed business connectivity,
broadband connections to the “last mile” and wireless
hotspots.
Blowers said Cisco and others are working on broadening network
coverage with Wimax, and many suppliers are working on making the
data handover better. This hand¬over is a problem at the moment,
but networking equipment makers are building session management
into the access points, said Blowers.
He added that the meshed Wi-Fi/ Wimax networks will eventually
carry wireless voice over IP traffic, when the upstream and
downstream links are both broader.
As for 3G cellular mobile technology, which is used to carry voice
and data over specific frequencies of the radio spectrum, this will
continue to develop in a linear fashion, said analysts.
3G will continue to be the technology of choice for mobiles, with
4G about 10 years away, said Blowers.
One analyst said that the wide area wireless networks available
from the main carriers will move beyond 3G to 3.5G with HSDPA (High
Speed Downlink Packet Access), and HSDUPA – which features both a
fast downlink and fast uplink.
3.5G technology offers theoretical data transmission speeds of up
to 15mbps. By comparison, 4G offers 100mbps while moving, and 1gbps
while stationary.
3.5G has a low latency, which means fewer delays to users when
downloading attachments and accessing demanding business
applications such as enterprise resource planning and customer
relationship management.
Blowers said businesses would benefit from this technology by
having faster and deeper mobile access to the business when out and
about, and advanced collaboration tools, when voice becomes linked
into business applications.
He added that faster mobile smartphones, coupled with technology
that can switch the user’s connection over to the corporate
wireless Lan when they are in the office, will enable business
users to carry a single telephony device.
“It is about having the ability to use whatever technology is
available and switch from Wi-Fi to cellular to Bluetooth. At the
moment we are a bit siloed and cannot be switched from one to the
other without losing the session,” said Blowers.
He said that in the supply chain, radio frequency identification
technology will continue to mature as it is more widely adopted.
“The technology is no longer an issue, though there will possibly
still be a cost issue. There may be back end data issues – you will
have to be able to support the additional data that is generated
[as more items are tagged],” said Blowers.
Sarah Burnett, senior research analyst at Butler Group, suggested
that mobile phones may be able to interact with RFID chips to send
real-time information all over the world.
“I can see RFID eventually appearing in the consumer area – for
example, to tag cereal packages, to speed up responses to
promotions, linked to mobiles, to get instant feedback,” she
said.
Several new wireless Lan technologies will emerge within this
timeframe, most notably near-field communication (NFC). This is
being developed by Philips Electronics and Sony, and promises
secure, more affordable, low-power wireless networks.
NFC supports transmission speeds up to 212kbps, and is inexpensive,
costing 10 to 20 times less than alternatives, and requires
one-half to one-third as much power as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. NFC
also has a transmission range of only a few feet, which makes it
difficult for intruders to intercept data.
Suppliers trialling NFC include MasterCard International,
Microsoft, Motorola and Visa International.
Another technology that is likely to emerge by 2011 is Zigbee,
developed by a group of more than 100 suppliers. Like other NFCs,
Zigbee is a relatively cheap and simple system.
The standards-based wireless technology does not use Wi-Fi,
infrared or Bluetooth. Zigbee operates in the 2.4GHz radio band –
the same one used by Wi-Fi systems, microwave ovens and cordless
phones.
It supports data transmission rates up to 250kbps at ranges from
30ft to 200ft. The specification also supports a mesh network
connecting up to 65,000 network nodes.
“Zigbee is a near-field wireless technology that is used with a
mesh and sensors to get information about things – for example, in
industrial automation. It can be used in nuclear power plants which
have a lot of pipe, flow, temperature and pressure information they
have to control. It would be difficult to run Ethernet cables in
these environments, but Zigbee uses
802.15b, which is like Wi-Fi but has a low data rate and low data
read consumption, and is coupled with temperature or pressure
sensors,” said Daley.
As companies continue to explore existing wireless technologies
such as 802.11, Bluetooth and 3G, and emerging technologies such as
wireless mesh networks, NFC and Zigbee, it is clear that the
options are broadening. The wireless landscape of 2011 will look
significantly different from 2006.
Looking five years ahead - the growth of
mobile
Full internet access on mobile devices, with advanced search
facilities
Seamless connections to enterprise systems from small devices, with
fast two-way connections
Data manipulation and business intelligence on the mobile
client
Extended wireless network zones used to shift large data
volumes
Applications that give employees control and ordering capabilities
to restructure and reformat data and broadcast it to many
people
Home offices used as data storage nodes, with mobile devices
uploading and synchronising data
Mobility encourages the blurring of the working day as mobile
devices become more powerful
Extensive use of video conferencing to lower business travel
costs.
Source: Michael Hulme, professor at the Institute of Advanced
Studies, Lancaster University
How mobile devices and applications are set to
develop
Mobile e-mail
By 2010, wireless e-mail will be a commodity and organisations will
no longer need to cost-justify investments. Gartner predicts that
wireless e-mail users worldwide will reach 20 million in 2006 and
100 million in 2009
Mobile collaboration
Mobile workforce and collaborative technologies both feature in the
top four priorities for chief information officers in 2006,
according to Gartner’s annual survey of 1,400 CIOs globally
Consumerisation
Technologies such as Wi-Fi, smartphones, wireless PDAs, and
consumer software such as Google Desktop and Skype have steadily
infiltrated the enterprise and are posing security risks to
corporate data. If organisations do not provide these facilities to
their workforces, employees will embrace them anyway, which also
presents a huge risk
Growth of smartphones
By 2009, one in three mobile handset phones will be a smartphone.
As smartphones become widely available, medium-cost devices capable
of delivering simple thin- and thick-client corporate applications,
they will increasingly be used as business tools and evaluated by
IT managers
Mobile business 2.0
Mobile business 2.0 is Gartner’s term for the next generation of
mobile business. It will arrive between 2009 and 2011. Mobile
business 2.0 will mean data will be selectively pushed to the user
based on context, matching the users’ needs, interests, mood,
location and even recent behaviour.
Source: Nick Jones, vice-president, Gartner