InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
November 23, 1998
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The bank says adding wireless capabilities to the smaller devices is more useful than adding them to notebooks, chiefly because of the size, which permits use whenever and wherever needed. "You have mobility with this device. You can realistically carry it with you," says Peter Scutt, a Banker's Trust managing director. Another advantage is that users don't have to go through a lengthy system boot-up procedure every time they want to start up the PalmPilots to dial into the network, Scutt says.
But even though close to one-third of the IS managers in large businesses surveyed say they plan to offer wireless access within the next year, fewer than 20% offer it now, and that percentage is smaller for small and midsize businesses (see chart). And companies have had a few reasons for shying away from implementing wireless access for remote users.For security specialist Trident, for instance, messages sent over cellular phone networks would be too easy to intercept, while subscription costs for private wireless networks are too high, says Allaria. He also points out that developing the internal framework to support wireless access isn't worth it for companies until palmtops and handhelds reach critical mass. "When you have six people who are using it and 994 who aren't, it's not worth the infrastructure," he says.
Additionally, the 9.6-Kbps data transfer rate of most wireless connections is too slow a download transmission speed for many users. That could change in a few years, however, as new global satellites, slated to start beaming down data around 2002, allow bandwidth of about 2 Mbps.
Some businesses would also prefer devices built from the ground up to be wireless, because such an integrated device would theoretically eliminate conflicts that might occur when users implement add-on technologies. A company called Symbian Ltd., backed by L.M. Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia, and Psion, is working on developing by late 1999 a range of such devices--including smart phones, palmtops and handhelds--that would be able to handle data and voice.
Those devices would let users check E-mail, take orders, stock products, and perform other tasks securely over long distances at low cost. Similarly, Qualcomm Inc. has created a digital phone, due early next year, that uses the Palm OS, providing wireless data and voice capabilities as well as conventional palmtop functions.
EDS's Brown says Maxtor would be more likely to adopt palmtop or handheld devices in force if they incorporate wireless technology for both voice and data. "The combination could decomplicate users' lives," he says; it could cut down on the number of devices they'd carry and relieve them from duplicating information among multiple products.
But even when vendors conquer most of these wireless problems, and myriad applications and databases are in place for handheld and palmtop devices, IT managers know there will be other obstacles. IT organizations' security policies often discourage access to data by nonstandard means. "In the enterprise, one of the main problems is getting to the data behind the firewall," says Joe Sipher, director of product marketing for the Palm Computing division of 3Com.
At LucasVarity, a Dayton, Ohio, manufacturer of brakes for trucks and tractors, director of global information Mike Bohanon acknowledges that issue. The company has about 30 PalmPilot users, and Bohanon says the token-based security measures he must maintain on his remote access servers would make it frustrating to use the Pilot to tap into the company's ERP database. That's because the high-level security software generates a new password for each log-in, which the user must enter--all over a slow 9.6-Kbps connection. If users can't transmit the password within a few minutes, they have to go through the process all over again, and that gets frustrating.
Management TroublesManaging these miniature machines can also be frustrating. In many organizations, the move to handhelds or palmtops has been a grassroots movement. The survey shows that while only 17% of notebooks are purchased directly by other departments, 27% of handhelds and 32% of palmtops are bought by individual departments (see chart).
That presents IT personnel with some support challenges, because they often haven't set up the infrastructure to handle the new machines. For example, says Trident's Allaria, "custom applications would have to be recompiled for Windows CE if we buy those devices, and we don't have anyone on staff writing for it at the moment. We can only deal with so many variables."
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Illustration by Lydia Hess
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