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By Quocirca, 29 October 2004 08:19

COMMENT Because choosing the right wireless technologies for your business can be a real hassle, Quocirca analyst Rob Bamforth breaks down the options and gives some advice on how to make the right decision.

Asking the question "Do we need wireless?" is bit like asking "Do we need software?" It's impossible to provide a sensible answer without being more specific.

When the mobile industry gets more specific, though, it categorises options based on a type of technology. The questions then become "Do we need GPRS?", "Do we need Wi-Fi?" or "Do we need wireless PDAs?"

As such, it's still impossible to bridge the gap between technology and business-level objectives, which is a pre-requisite for companies wanting to make sound IT investment decisions.

At the other extreme, looking at each mobile application offered by vendors and service providers is not helpful either because there are so many ideas. Also, the innovation created by the opportunity of instant mobile connection combined with inherent device limitations makes it difficult to compare and position one solution with another.

It's hard for an enterprise to decide where to invest. It is far better to consider which categories of application are relevant to the business as a starting point for developing a coherent mobility strategy. This helps precisely identify the applications of value to specific departments or employee roles.

Splitting mobile applications into categories benefits both suppliers and users. A logical view of these categories combines both telecommunications and IT perspectives and enables an assessment of where the operational impact and financial costs and benefits lie. Here are the major areas:

Network value-added services: The operator simply adds basic services to the bearer network. This includes enhanced quality of service, security features such as virtual private networks, business intelligence detailing how the network is being used and customer care or support. These services add value and controls to the IT and finance department but do little to significantly change or enhance business processes.

Enhanced voice: Mobile phones are great for making phone calls but businesses waste a fortune on missed calls, telephone tag and voicemail hell. Voice services can be enhanced without expensive or complex phones. Push-button instant access to groups on a single call, 'presence' information that shows who's busy before a call is made, voicemail forwarding and text-to-speech services can all be built into the infrastructure with negligible impact on the device. Across teams where travel is significant and hands-free use is required, these can streamline communications, keeping the phone simple. These have minimal impact on IT, little upfront investment and, with sensible accounting, premium call services could be paid for by savings elsewhere in telephony costs.

Communication and collaboration: Mobile email is probably the application with the most obvious value to the enterprise. Email has become the de facto method of business workflow. Mobile email tightens decision cycles to a quick glance and response. The benefits are highest in roles where rapid response has significant value, as seen by the early deployments of devices such as the BlackBerry. Today the use of email is so pervasive that unreplied-to messages are a drag on business processes, when in the past a phone call would have generated an instant response. For mass deployment, this is still a hard business case to make, however, as many budgets and agendas are involved.

Mobile client/server: Remote access to enterprise data is broadly useful but the horizontal applications of sales force automation and field service management generate best value. These are most tightly integrated to and dependent upon current IT systems. Often the tendency is to simply mobilise an existing interface but this ignores the changes in processes required for safe and efficient remote access. Implemented effectively, the benefits are live access to corporate data. This means faster decisions for customers, which can increase their satisfaction, and shorter travel times, which reduces costs. These have a direct impact on those involved, narrowing the scope for measuring return on investment. No wonder this is a popular choice for wireless pilots and full scale deployments.

Machine to machine (M2M): This describes the emerging opportunity to use a wireless connection to a remote location so you can feed data back to the business. The location may be hazardous, difficult to reach or just too expensive to send a person to. For businesses this could provide much-needed accurate information on assets, saving time and cost and enabling more rapid and relevant decision making. Perhaps, as in the case of a major oil production company, it can even ensure that anticipated corporate value matches the assets held. Imprecise knowledge of resource levels and their location can prove costly to everyone, including shareholders.

Content reception: While most of the attention in this area is related to the download of multimedia content by consumers, certain needs of the mobile office worker also fall into this category. Working while on the move often requires access to internal documents as well as the ability to receive updates or internal news. Most applications in this category are about making efficient use of connection time and bandwidth, thus saving costs, so the decisions to invest in them mirror those taken on tariffs in purchasing and IT.

Enterprises rarely make technology deployment decisions that take into account the specific portfolios of applications to be accessed by each user. The fact is, for desktop IT, it's cheaper to over-specify than manage configurations tailored to usage profiles, especially in an industry fixated by features, speeds and feeds.

With mobile use, the situation used to be equally simple. Choose a standard configured laptop, a phone with sensible car kit and deploy evenly across all the employees whose managers have sufficient capital expenditure budget to afford them.

As PDAs and smart phones edge into enterprise networks, the choices have become more complex but the opportunity exists to make decisions based on the categories of applications required by each user. Rather than adopting a wholesale approach of 'one size fits all', organisations should identify roles, processes and capability requirements as part of their wireless strategy, then make the right budgetary investment and, finally, select appropriate connection and device technologies.

This means they can look at their suppliers in a new light, identifying those who are selling solutions tailored to problems, not simply the hottest common denominator products. Whilst hot products might work well in consumer marketing and with early adopters, a more sophisticated, advisory approach is more appropriate for mainstream business customers.