Easier Wireless Links

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Easier Wireless Links

New products cut cost and complexity

By Mary E. Thyfault
Issue date: Feb. 3, 1997

Severing the wire connection to the network hasn't been easy for corporate America. While the idea of wireless links to corporate data appeals to mobile workers, the awkwardness of most wireless technology has left many professionals searching for phone jacks instead of popping up antennas.

But a spate of product announcements has fueled cautious optimism among users and vendors for steady growth in vertical m arkets-where wireless technology has been most successful-and for broader adoption of horizontal applications such as E-mail.

The new products include palmtops running Microsoft's Windows CE operating system, and mobile phones with limited messaging capabilities. Motorola and others are working with Lotus Development and Microsoft to develop wireless access to corporate E-mail systems. Also, wireless modems are becoming cheaper, with prices as low as $300, and more portable. The U.S. market for mobile data networking, which has 1.9 million users today, is expected to grow 45% a year over the next five years, reaching 10 million users by 2002, according to the Yankee Group Inc., a consulting firm in Boston.

But big obstacles still remain. Fortune 500 users surveyed last year by the Yankee Group rated the ease of use, availability, and cost of current wireless data networks as less than satisfactory. Users say functions that are easy to do on an office LAN often are still highly complex and expensive to implement with wireless nets. "It takes a lot of sweat," says Steve Fastabend, global resource center service manager at Honeywell Inc. in Minneapolis, which is testing ruggedized portable PCs and RAM Mobile Data's wireless net for its field-service technicians. "It's not plug-and-play."

Experts Wanted
It doesn't help that in-house wireless expertise is still rare. "IS doesn't understand it," says David Duncan, director of customer support at Olivetti North America, which uses a wireless network based on the RAM Mobile Data network for its engineers. "It's new, foreign territory to them."

The emergence of industry standards could reduce some of the complexity-and make wireless expertise easier to find. Analysts and vendors expect Windows CE to become one of those standards. "CE is a can't-miss opportunity," says Ira Brodsky, president of DataComm Research, a market-research firm in Wilmette, Ill. A key attraction: "It's very easy for Windows developers to come up to speed and start wr iting code for CE," says Jim Floyd, a Microsoft product manager for Windows CE. About 40 vendors are already developing CE applications.

Microsoft is requiring that handheld makers build a PCMCIA type 2 slot for wireless modem cards into their machines. Motorola is developing a $500 Personal Messenger wireless modem card for CE machines, and Wireless Peripherals plans a CDPD modem to mount on the bottom of CE-based handhelds.

Manufacturers such as Casio, Compaq, and NEC are starting to roll out Windows CE systems. Research firms predict sales of anywhere from 350,000 to

1 million CE-based units this year, with as many as 15% of users using wireless links to desktop machines. At around $1,500, CE machines may also help overcome another problem: cost. With ruggedized notebooks costing as much as $6,000, "a lot of people want wireless, but there's a sticker-shock factor," says Fastabend.

Vendors also plan to bundle CE software with wireless service relatively cheaply. Wynd Communications Corp . in San Luis Obispo, Calif., plans to offer its WyndMail wireless service, which lets users send messages to E-mail systems, faxes, pagers, and telephones for just $29.95 a month.

The industry also is trying to solve some of the problems of network complexity. Last month, the Portable Computer and Communications Association (PCCA) announced an effort to develop a reference model for technology to easily connect users' mobile palmtop computers to desktop applications.

Users now can connect palmtops to desktops a few feet away via a cable or infrared connection. But remote mobile users can't connect from a wireless network to their LAN-based data without a major effort from their IS department. That typically involves specialized software and a communications line between the corporate net and the wireless network provider.

"Today, if you have [Lotus] cc:Mail mobile with AirMobile [Motorola's wireless connectivity software], you have to do a lot of things to the server and get IS involved," says W alt Purnell, president and CEO of wireless network provider Ardis Co. in Lincolnshire, Ill. "Then you start to question whether you really need it."

Cellular carriers hope that another product, PocketNet telephones, also will take off. PocketNet phones are cellular phones that work over CDPD networks and let users receive text messages and type short messages on a four-line display using the push-button pad. AT&T Wireless will roll out PocketNet services for businesses this month. Users will get E-mail service and will be able to access the Internet or their intranet to perform simple functions such as checking the status of shipments.

U.S. Bank is testing PocketNet phones. "We see the potential for customers to access U.S. Bank information on ATM and branch locations as well as important phone numbers while they're on the road," says Tim Meier, senior VP of IS for the Seattle banking company.

While smaller, simpler wireless devices may stimulate the growth of wireless networks, applications are the real key to the technology's adoption, analysts and vendors say. "Without applications, hardware is just a doorstop," says Joe Boychuck, a marketing manager in Motorola's wireless data group.

In the last year, Motorola and other companies have started shipping middleware that connects mobile users via Ardis, RAM Mobile Data, and CDPD networks to their corporate Lotus cc:Mail, Notes, and Microsoft Mail systems. Lawson Products Inc., which supplies nuts and bolts to the hardware industry, is testing Motorola's AirMobile middleware to connect its sales staff to Lotus Notes and cc:Mail via the Ardis network. The setup lets Lawson's warehouses fill orders throughout the day instead of waiting for users to send in orders at day's end. "Now we have an eight-hour constant flow instead of a panic in the morning and late afternoon," says Jim Mann, VP of IS and CIO at Lawson in Des Plaines, Ill.

Wireless Web
But the killer app may be wireless access to the Internet and intranets. Metricom in Los Gatos, Calif., already offers a wireless Internet service for PC users in a few areas for $29.95 a month, plus a $10 modem rental. Unwired Planet, a Redwood Shores, Calif., software developer, offers server software that lets PocketNet phone users extract information from Web servers.

Others, including systems integrator Syclo Corp. in Barrington, Ill., are developing similar software for PocketNet phones and CE machines. "The PocketNet phone starts to have tremendous value when you tie it into a company's existing system," says Jeff Kleban, VP of sales and marketing for Syclo. "E-mail is not sufficient for companies to make a buy decision."

Still, some industry analysts remain bearish about the prospects for wireless, arguing that the wireless market won't really take off until horizontal applications such as E-mail catch on. Vertical-industry and company-specific applications now account for 90% of the wireless data business. "Vertical applications can never pay for the hundreds of millions of dollars that data networks have invested in infrastructure," says Bill Frezza, president of Wireless Computing Associates, a consulting firm in Yardley, Pa. "Wireless data is still struggling, and I question whether some of today's major infrastructure players are going to have the stamina to tough it out."

Frezza says vendors and carriers haven't yet overcome all the obstacles to adoption of wireless technology-including price, ease of use, coverage, application compatibility, performance, form factor, battery life, and distribution.

Wireless technology is still hard to use and implement-for both IS and users. "Internal IS departments don't have the wireless expertise," says Emmett Hume, VP of marketing for systems integrator Racotek Inc. in Minneapolis. "There's quite a track record of companies that have spent a couple of million dollars [trying to implement wireless] and then gone back to the drawing board." Wireless is unlike other LAN or WAN technologies, Hume adds. For example, wireless bandw idth is very narrow and costly, and users may drop in and out of coverage.

The PCCA industry group has devoted a committee to educating the IS community and soliciting input. But at the PCCA's first meeting, only one user was present-Steven Baer, a project manager for mobile/wireless computing at Seattle City Light, an electric utility that is implementing wireless over cellular and radio networks. "They really need to find out what the back-end issues are, including security, costs of the device, maintenance, and router and bridge issues," he says.

It's not only IS that thinks implementing wireless is tough going; some users also find the technology challenging. "Our most difficult problem was training end users to use the system," says Duncan of Olivetti North America.

But users agree the rewards of wireless technology can be worth the pain. Honeywell's Fastabend says not only will his company be able to provide better customer service-because technicians will be able to enter a customer site, access the customer's service history, and order parts online-but it will be better able to collect data about the exact cost of servicing specific products. He says wireless will give Honeywell an edge. In fact, he adds, "it will give me the sharpest instrument in town."

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