Analysts are, after all, fundamentally in the business of
predicting the future. As everyone knows, this is an enterprise
fraught with peril and excuses, and these come with the territory.
At the risk of having to deal with both of these later, however,
and in the spirit of the season -- looking forward to the promise
of a shiny new year -- I'm going to make two big predictions for
2007.
The first of these I've mentioned before, and that's
convergence. The first form of convergence, called fixed/mobile
convergence (FMC), allows a cell phone to become an extension on
the corporate PBX. The convenience here is undeniable: one number,
one device, and -- my personal favorite -- one voicemail. But
there's a much more important form of convergence, called
mobile/mobile convergence (MMC), which will provide both improved
capacity and greater availability and reliability. The idea here is
to combine a wide-area technology like cellular or WiMAX and a
local-area technology (that would be Wi-Fi -- no competition here!)
into a single system where the user has no idea which radio is
being used at any given moment. Combining the coverage of a
wide-area technology with the capacity of both metro-scale and
enterprise WLAN deployments is a core theme for 2007. The most
common form of MMC will be in enterprise-centric deployments, where
IT departments add a few new components to their network and off
they go, managing their own secure wide-area voice and data
services. Over time, the carriers will also get into the act, but
this won't be a major factor in wireless until 2008.
The second prediction actually builds on the first, if a bit
indirectly. As I noted above, users want to carry a minimal number
of mobile devices, and, as these devices become the province of
enterprise IT and less of a personal choice (yes, that's going to
happen, and I'll have more on this in 2007), the real issue is
managing and securing all of that corporate data now floating
around on personal devices – an unhealthy situation if ever there
was one. So, two things will happen here. The first is that the
purchasing of personal mobile communications technology will move
away from the individual and into enterprise IT. The primary
motivator here isn't cost savings, although that will be a factor,
but rather being able to manage these mobile devices centrally. All
too often, vital (and often sensitive) corporate data lives on
handsets and wireless PDAs. If these are lost or stolen, there's
usually no recourse – data can be lost or compromised. Having these
units under the control of IT means that they can be checked for
viruses (yes, there are viruses known to infect mobile devices) and
have their configurations verified and locked, and that data can be
secured, backed up, and even erased ("zapped") should the unit
disappear for any reason.
And this development motivates the second, which -- beginning
next year – is going to be a really big story: the rise of mobile
devices supporting Web services, service-oriented architectures,
and software as a service. Data, after all, is now far more
important than the device that holds it. Centralized management
will lead to centralized applications, with mobile users having
very much the same experience they would have in the office, and
much less emphasis on specific mobile operating environments. I've
been working this way with a Palm Treo 650 for some time, and --
OK, I'll admit it -- it's not perfect yet. But this trend is one
we'll be revisiting with the New Year. So, in the meantime, have a
nice holiday, and stay tuned for a very exciting 2007 in wireless
communications and mobile computing.
About the author: Craig Mathias is a principal with Farpoint
Group, an advisory firm based in Ashland, Mass., specializing in
wireless networking and mobile computing. The firm works with
manufacturers, enterprises, carriers, government, and the financial
community on all aspects of wireless and mobile. He can be reached
at craig@farpointgroup.com.