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SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION
Business Goes Wireless Everybody's Doing It 
Wireless technology is changing lives. For example, doctors and pharmacists practicing with the San Jose Medical Group in California write and fulfill prescription orders on a wireless system. Auto insurers can now settle claims in the field. Location knowledge allows valuable cargo to be precisely tracked. Business users can travel the world and still make and receive calls, send text e-mail messages, browse the Internet, access corporate databases, and synchronize their calendars with their office desktop system. And more is coming. CIOs are moving wireless and mobile solutions higher up on their "to do" list. At the same time, they are closely watching associated costs, which are becoming more extensive as the number of products, services, devices and software options expand. The CIOs are also asking more difficult questions and are demanding clear answers before signing off on projects. Research is beginning to show real competitive benefits and increased competitive advantage from the use of mobile applications. This section will help readers plan a wireless solution, and discuss the options and strategies of network carriers, as well as the applications available today. Planning Your Wireless Strategy You know you want to try wireless, but where do you start? Instead of gravitating toward a "cool" Blackberry device or setting up a Wireless Access Point, think in clear and practical terms about how you're going to use it. Where will it be used; who is going to use it; how much data will be sent or received and how often will users need to transmit or access messages. "This massively reduces the set of choices you have and, therefore, it becomes a whole lot easier to research," said Ian Hayes, president of Clarity Consulting of South Hamilton, Massachusetts and author of a forthcoming book entitled "Just Enough Wireless Computing: A Framework for Managers." Hayes suggests that you take the Five W Test: (1) Why do you want a wireless application? The answer will determine how much you'll want to spend. If you want to do it because it's cool, the money you spend is likely to have limited business application. If you have to do it because your competition is moving into it--if it's a matter of business survival--you'll probably want to spend a lot more. (2) Who is going to use the wireless application and how? The answer will help define the devices and interfaces that make the most sense. "If I give a device to a computer person, they are already comfortable with the technology," Hayes says. On the other hand, if you give a device to an emergency room physician, who needs to be able to access crucial information easily and quickly, user friendliness counts enormously. If it's for a salesperson to use for presentations, the appearance of the device matters. If it's for a package delivery person who needs to scan packages coming off a truck, how the device looks is not a consideration. (3) What is the specific application for? A building inspector filling out a form on a PDA doesn't need to synchronize more than once each day. A stock trader, however, needs instant verification that a trade has been made, and the communication has to be secure. "I also need a method of ensuring the integrity of the data going back and forth, in case we have a failure," Hayes declares. These requirements define the application architecture, and will influence its cost. (4) When is the application going to be used? The answer has implications for which network is appropriate and how data is managed. If the user needs to be alerted when stock prices exceed certain thresholds, the device must be constantly connected. If mobile salespeople working in the city where good wireless coverage is available have to perform administrative tasks when they go home to the suburbs--where coverage may be erratic or non-existent--a site-specific solution would have to be found. (5) Where is the application going to be used? The answer dictates which network is appropriate as well as what device would be best. If a mobile sales force is deployed in an urban area where wireless coverage is good, radio frequencies should be sufficient. But if the user works for a delivery company with distribution into rural areas, a satellite solution would be needed to provide coverage. Satellite links are expensive, so the firm's application developers would have to write the application to send small bursts of information only when needed. "If you think top down like this," says Hayes, "it will help you conceive an intelligent strategy for your first forays into wireless." Defining Your Wireless Requirements You've made the decision to try wireless technology. Now it's time to get specific. How do you define your requirements? It's important to clarify your business needs, now and for the future. "Get your internal technology and business groups together to work out a game plan," says Phillip Redman, research director of Wireless Mobile Networks for the Gartner Group of Stamford, Connecticut, a leading technology analyst firm. Business managers need to be closely involved in defining the company's wireless needs. "The IT group may be willing to help out with support, implementation and management, but they may not thoroughly understand the needs of the business team."
Mobile and wireless are not exactly the same. Mobility is about entering or using information while out of the office. It's not about high speed. On the other hand, the strength of wireless is immediacy. "The difference is in the timeliness or immediacy of the information," says Redman. Network carrier service fees of $50 or so per month per user should be considered. "Up to 50 percent of your costs can be cut by using a basic mobile solution," Redman concludes. Wide Range of Hardware Options Once you know which application you need, it's time to choose your wireless handheld device. Today, there are many choices, ranging from notebook computers, to PDAs, to cell phones. PDAs are more data-oriented, so if your application requires heavy use of e-mail, a PDA might be the best choice. For short messages to customers or co-workers, a cell phone will do the job. Are the two merging? Redman doesn't think so. "A merger device would be a compromise -- too big to be a great phone and too small to be a great computer," he says. "It wouldn't fulfill the needs of the majority of users." Clearly, the device choices are very personal and available for all budgets. One company offers a cellular phone made from titanium. The price: $21,000. Software Translates to Usefulness The mobile device operating system (OS) war has resolved itself to two major choices: Windows CE from Microsoft and the Palm OS from Palm Computing. Many development tools and off-the-shelf applications are available for those two platforms. In many cases, these applications can be optimized for the wireless device or for the information that needs to be exchanged. The narrowing down of mobile OS choices has dramatically reduced wireless solution costs, according to Redman. However, major software application suppliers aren't supporting mobile and wireless applications to the same degree as those running on more established hardware. For example, if network service is not available 100 percent of the time, the application would have to store data or messages, until network service is available. "In many cases, existing providers haven't done a good job of offering this support," Redman says. Still, Microsoft is offering mobile access to its database and e-mail systems. Siebel offers a mobile-oriented customer relationship management package. Oracle's entry is Oracle Lite, and package suppliers, SAP and PeopleSoft, have versions supporting wireless. Their challenge is how to support the many wireless hardware devices on the market in an economical way. As demand for wireless applications grows, Redman expects the major software package suppliers to respond with better applications. "Today the demand is still very small," he says. For developers, a move is on to write a single application available for any type of device. Although it used to be necessary to write to the Wireless Application Protocol and to employ Wireless Markup Language to display a user interface screen (as in standard Web pages), today, XHTML can be used to display an application on either a wired or a wireless device. The user interface built with XHTML has a degree of intelligence about the device. It knows whether the display can show two lines or six lines, whether it is a tiny screen or a 17 inch monitor. "The movement is to separate the content and its format," Redman observes. Questions to Ask Once you have determined which network carrier you want to work with, ask about their strategic plans, suggests Iain Gillott, founder and president of iGillott Research, a wireless consulting firm based in Austin, Texas. Ask if their network speeds will be increasing and when. Also, ask if you'll have to buy new wireless hardware in a year because the carrier may be supporting different devices down the road. You'll also want to know what range of devices they support. "You want to ensure the carrier offers more than two phones and one modem," Gillott suggests. Be aware that carriers are fiercely competing for your business; try to verify their claims. After you've completed your research on major hardware, software and network service providers, it would be worthwhile to research smaller, independent wireless service companies to see how they can help. "These companies can enable you to get your applications mobiles quickly," says Gillott. Check out Wireless Knowledge and Everypath. "These providers specialize in wireless applications and have done many implementations." Ask preferred vendor partners what smaller service firms they would recommend. "Pick their brains," Gillott says. "Choose a vendor with experience." Finally, don't commit too much to your initial wireless project. "Take baby steps," Gillott advises. Remember, you may have to handle the training for those who'll be using the wireless application; it would be a mistake to assume they won't need it. And know what your competition is doing. Be prepared to defend your turf. Carriers Seek Enterprise Customers Wireless network carriers are looking to win more business from higher-paying enterprise customers. The hope is, of course, to fund more rapid network upgrades. "Wireless data is seen as an opportunity to increase revenue per use," says Susan Welsh de Grimaldo, director of the Strategic Consulting Group, Washington, D.C. The main carriers are upgrading to higher-speed packet services, which will enable the development of a wider variety of wireless applications than are available today. For example, Sprint, AT&T Wireless and Verizon, have concentrated on voice and have limited circuit switch capability to deliver data. In contrast, Cingular Interactive operates the packet-switched Mobitex network at 8 Kbps, and has a high share of the market for users of the Research in Motion (RIM) hand-held devices running the Blackberry software for text e-mail communication. "We have over one million business data subscribers on our networks," says Tim Hogan, executive director of business marketing for Cingular, based in Atlanta, Georgia. And, although customers have been satisfied, there's still a demand for services running at higher speeds. "For future applications, it would be great to have land line speeds on wireless, but the reality today is that mission-critical applications have to use the bandwidth available," Hogan says. Still, the speed at which information moves is improving all the time. FedEx Ground, for instance, switched to the Cingular wireless network in 2000. All the delivery data captured by handheld scanners is transferred to FedEx Ground mainframe computers when the scanner is placed in the cradle in the delivery van. About 10 minutes later, the information is available to customers. AAA roadside assistance, fleet vehicle operators use the RIM 950 Wireless Handheld device with interactive messaging and other features running on the Cingular wireless network. As a result, AAA reports customer-waiting time in many regions has been reduced by up to 15 minutes per call. Next Generation The next-generation packet switching networks will provide integrated voice and data capabilities, but analysts estimate that these are at least two years away from being widely available. Everyone is getting into this high-speed game, but the reality is, if you can't prove ROI, it doesn't matter how fast it is. Infrastructure providers, who may not be visible to the end customer, support carriers by building the switches and base stations that determine the capacity and speed of service. Companies such as Ericsson, Lucent, Motorola, Nortel and Siemens are investing in the network infrastructure, each making huge bets on new technologies, such as 3G or alternative bandwidth approaches. These tremendous financial risks, as well as a challenged telecommunications sector, magnify the difficulties traditionally associated with making developing technologies available to a broad public. Carriers are in hot pursuit of the business user, who yields higher revenue on average than a voice customer. According to de Grimaldo of Strategic, "This year we are seeing the launch of much more enterprise and mobile service professional packages from the carriers." The carriers hope to reduce "churn" or customer turnover rate by providing more customized services such as e-mail and calendaring, which are more difficult for users to abandon abruptly. VoiceStream, for instance, is trying to win business customers over to its iStream service and WirelessInbox offering, that support access to Microsoft Outlook e-mail and calendar systems from a cell phone. Changes can be made even when the user accesses e-mail from a desktop PC. Carriers are also seeking to distinguish themselves by partnering with smaller firms that offer innovative technology. For example, Nextel Communications has entered into a closer partnership with RadioFrame Networks of Redmond, Washington because the firm has developed the means to help carriers seamlessly shift customers within a building from one wireless network to another. And David Murashige, vice president, strategic marketing, wireless networks, at Nortel, says that Wi-Fi is a good complement to 3G speeds. "The important factor is how you provision for seamless service between the public domain and the wide area network." Nortel offers carriers several products to help; today, the overall focus of the wireless arm of Nortel is to support the move to "always on" wireless data services. Some companies now offer products to carrier and infrastructure providers which monitor and test networks to make sure they stay up and running. A good example is Agilent Technologies, a spin off from Hewlett-Packard, which offers housing test, measurement and communication equipment. A major part of the $8.4 billion company's annual business comes from telecommunications, like recently announced products to help carriers serve mobile customers who want to roam between different wireless networks without losing the connection. A final note to wireless customers: Try to stay up to date with what's happening behind the scenes of the wireless industry. It will save you money in the long run. Having The World in The Palm of Your Hand The future of wireless technology has implications for the clothes you wear, the devices you carry and your social life in general. Here are some notions as to what's coming in wireless from Ian Pearson, futurologist with BT Exact Technologies, the research and services arm of British Telecom: Symbiotic Networking: Devices that have the ability to set up networks automatically are already available on a limited basis. "The devices will corporate and self-organize," Pearson says. The first example of such a device is from a company called Cybiko, which offers a small game console aimed at the teenage market. If, for example, the device is carried onto a train, it searches for a similar device within a 300-foot range. If it finds one, the two lucky owners can immediately start playing a game. Personalization Devices: Here's an example from Rocking Frog, a subsidiary of British Telecom, which offers a PDA running contextual middleware with knowledge of the user's location and personal preferences. The device's search technology filters information based on its relevance to the user's interests, which is derived from a personal profile built up over time. Rocking Frog is targeting the product to mobile providers and ISPs. Test projects are underway with Wcities to provide travel services and, with Flirt or Flame, a mobile dating game, in which geographically close players with similar profiles have the opportunity to flirt via a short message services (SMS) exchange. Ultra Wideband: A short-range, high capacity link in the range of hundreds of Mbps. Possible applications include use by public safety officials to see through walls. This technology may also permit portable wireless devices to communicate with each other. Examples: electronic cash cards, biometric cards and ID cards. Commercial use is several years off. Location-based Services: These capabilities, inherent in 3G networks, allow devices to be precisely located. "It makes socializing much easier; you will be able to track where your friends are in real time," Pearson advises. Identifier Tags: "We're experimenting in the U.K. with putting chips inside clothes," says Pearson. "These will allow stores to recognize the shopper's preferences." All this information will be available on a handheld device. Author: John P. Desmond (john_desmond@king-content.com) of King Content Company offers high technology publishing services. Visit: www.king-content.com Print Design: Sundberg & Associates Inc Produced by: Frank Long, International Media Associates, Phone: 508.888.3959 E-mail: flongima@aol.com Biotech Section writer: Debra Gordon |
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