InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
March 27, 2000
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Lack of standards and the sheer number of devices make development a real challenge
By Alan Radding
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pplication-development managers are about to get thrust into the middle of a wireless morass, a swamp of interim or nonexistent standards, incompatible devices, and brutal development constraints. But despite the problems, wireless is hot, fueled by a projected 1 billion wireless cell-phone users by 2003. The wireless promise of a new way to reach these potential customers has triggered a mad scramble, attracting everyone from Bill Gates to Jeff Bezos.Wireless technology lets people do business on the Internet anytime, anywhere. "Wireless is the growth hormone for E-commerce," says Bob Egan, VP of mobile and wireless computing at Gartner Group. It was Egan who projected the 1 billion worldwide cell phone users a few months back, and he now reports that major companies are looking closely at wireless.
For IT executives and application-development managers, the wireless onslaught will bring in more cutting-edge app-dev work. At the same time, it could become nightmarish, as managers and developers wrestle with a rapid proliferation of devices, each with different formats and capabilities. "We're looking at five years of device chaos," Egan warns.
The wireless application market may be in its infancy, but the few corporate wireless applications that have gone into production suggest these devices will become a valuable addition to the IT application portfolio. For example, Mobility Link Inc., a developer of wireless applications, created a wireless trouble-ticket application for a large service company. "Trouble tickets are short messages, so it was a very good fit for wireless," CEO Andrew Velez says. The application is expected to save the service company more than $1 million a year by cutting the time it takes to respond to those service requests.
A major utility turned to a wireless application for field technicians dispatched to cut off customers' electric service because of nonpayment. Late payers often wait until the last moment before rushing into the electric company office with their payments. The wireless application lets the technicians access the latest payment information via a Nokia cellular phone just before they pull the meter to shut off service.
As simple as these applications seem, building them is far from easy. It requires painstaking planning and design as developers wrestle with tiny displays, limited bandwidth, rudimentary navigation and input capabilities, and unsettled standards. In addition, there's the sheer variety of wireless devices.
Remember the days when applications had to be developed for a profusion of desktop systems: DOS PCs, different versions of Windows, Macs, and a variety of Unix systems? The new wireless world presents a much greater array of devices, and it promises to become even more varied. In the desktop world, IT at least could control some of the diversity through the acquisition process, which involved buying and installing costly, complicated desktop systems-something users wouldn't usually do on their own. Today, individuals often buy low-cost wireless devices for themselves. As they carry these IP-enabled devices, they want to get at their E-mail, calendar, and customer data, which means accessing corporate IT's systems.
It's even quite likely that many people will have more than one device-a personal digital assistant, a personal cell phone, and a company-provided cell phone or two-way pager. "The likely reality is that there is no one device that will do it all for us," says Jane Zweig, executive VP at Herschel Shosteck Associates, a research firm that closely tracks wireless communications issues. This not only complicates application development but raises data synchronization issues.
Nick Hopkins discovered that different devices make development complicated. "You may end up writing the code more than once," says Hopkins, application-development director at MapQuest.com Inc. in Lancaster, Pa. MapQuest.com puts maps and driving directions on its popular Web site, making driving directions available to users with wireless devices. This is a natural application for mobile individuals, and the pressure is mounting to make it available for an increasingly broad range of wireless devices.
MapQuest.com developers, however, find that each device has different requirements. Some devices, such as Nokia phones, use the Wireless Application Protocol and the Wireless Markup Language. Others, such as Phone.com, use the Handheld Device Markup Language, a forerunner of WML. Palm devices and other personal digital assistants have their own operating systems that require different programming altogether. Palm, for example, uses Palm Query Applications, while others run Windows CE. Even cell phones that use WML will likely have different screen formats.
Large companies, schooled in the Internet's lessons and wise to the importance of first-mover advantage, aren't expected to sit on the wireless sidelines for long. In Europe, wireless technology is primarily consumer- driven. Major banks have rolled out applications to let consumers check balances, track stocks, and pay bills through their cellular phones. 
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