The adoption of wireless technology has moved beyond small pilot deployments in meeting rooms to implementation on a company-wide basis.
Uptake is also expanding from the initial markets of healthcare, education and retail to other sectors, such as financial services.
Adrian Drozd, a senior analyst at Datamonitor, says the technology is now more mature and proven, prices have fallen, and former security issues have largely been dealt with. “Not every company has a full wireless network, but most have dabbled and have seen what they can do, so we’re now seeing not less vertical, but more horizontal use,” he says.
“Wireless comes into its own for laptop users, who are not cabled into the power supply, and that is the use coming in to improve flexibility and efficiency.’
Such use continues apace and enables organisations to access key back-end applications, such as sales force automation, field service and logistics.
Ellen Daley, a research director at analyst Forrester Research, says return on investment tends to concentrate on more efficient ways to serve the customer. “Increasingly we see that effort is becoming a cost of doing business, particularly in the case of wireless e-mail, where most folks are now doing it because their competitors are,” she says.
Organisations are also starting to consider voice over wireless networks, although such services tend to be at the trial phase and the technology is not expected to become industry standard for another couple of years. Drozd says businesses need an incredibly reliable and stable wireless network, with great coverage across the office, if they want to do voice. “The infrastructure has to hand off to different access points to get the best path, so many companies are realising they have to invest in a suitable network now to be able to look at voice in the future,’ he says.
Key benefits of a converged wireless network are increased efficiency and cost savings. Drozd says a dual voice and data handset enables workers to make cheap calls, whether in the office or on the move. “It will provide the same advantages as voice over IP, except people will only have one number, which means that they will always be contactable,’ he says.
Such possibilities are already encouraging some organisations to evaluate better internal management options, in the shape of centralised switches that control thin access points.
The centralised switches, which come with added functionality and intelligence, start at about €12,000. They can deal with between 50 and 100 access points, which makes them more cost-effective for large networks.
The switches handle user authentication functions and also automatically configure access points for maximum efficiency. The technology is already moving into the mainstream. Vendors such as Nortel Networks and Vocera have released specialised dual-mode voice and data handsets to exploit demand.
Gavin Blunt, principal IP communications consultant at IT services provider Logicalis, says the healthcare sector is attempting to improve efficiency by improving communications. “So nurses, for example, can read a patient’s chart and get approval for a course of medication by giving doctors a quick call using their wireless device.”
“We see wireless providing another active network, particularly on the local area side of things rather than having to wait ages for them to respond to a pager message,” he says. ‘Acceptance of wireless technology has grown to a degree that most organisations are willing to see it as a valid communications tool. “There has been a lot of focus over the past 18 months on security, because people have realised its value in providing application mobility, not just for accessing e-mail in the office.”
An important application of wireless is in location-based services and asset tracking. Here, a piece of medical equipment, such as a defibrillator, is tagged with a wireless network card or RFID token. With the help of a wireless network, staff can locate the device on an electronic floor plan to enable them to react more quickly to emergencies.
Interest in tracking systems is also being shown in other fields, such as manufacturing. But such developments do not mean that leading-edge wireless networks are about to become the dominant business infrastructure, says Forrester’s Daley. “We see wireless providing another active network, particularly on the local area side of things,” she says. “But in two or three years’ time, organisations will not be exclusively wireless. Rather, they will be both wired and wireless.”
Beyond the organisational boundary, wireless technology will enable businesses to operate in real time, because employees, partners and customers will be in constant contact. Connectivity possibilities here will include 3G wireless broadband and Wi-Max high-throughput technology.
Andy Brown, researcher IDC’s programme manager for European mobile, says 3G may not have taken off in a mass-market sense, but several key sectors, such as utilities, logistics, transportation and the public sector have shown a keen interest in the potential of the technology.
“3G is about getting a lot of information out and back to a central point quickly, and so various industries have been very receptive and invested pretty significantly in broad systems to increase efficiency and reduce paper,” he says. Wi-Max, says Forrester’s Daley, is more likely to be deployed outside the organisation as a means of providing broadband access to rural areas and small towns.
“We don’t see Wi-Max being used as a broad-based wireless access technology, at least in the next five years, but as a bridging technology to introduce connectivity at a lower cost,” she says.
The technology will be used to replace more expensive leased lines between offices, as a substitute for microwave technologies linking hard-to-wire buildings over large campuses, or to provide connectivity to remote locations where it is too expensive to run copper or fibre pipes.
It will take some time before support for Wi-Max is available for laptop and PDA devices, not least because of the lack of global agreement about the spectrum in which the technology should operate.
But, as Drozd concludes, wireless adoption is becoming more widespread. “Some companies are testing wireless in individual departments for things such as hot desking, while others are rolling it out across the business,’ he says. ‘There is no one-size fits all standard, but the one thing that is clear is that wireless use will become increasingly prevalent.’
What the experts say
The hotel trade is incredibly competitive both in terms of bottom line profits and gross operating profit for available rooms. Customers have an amazing choice, so you have to be on top of things and at the forefront of technology to maximise use. It is all about improving services to add to customer satisfaction. Stephen Kyjak-Lane, general manager, K-West Hotel. The challenges companies face adopting wireless technology predominantly concern security and management. They need to learn to manage mobile and wireless like they do traditional networks and devices.
Ellen Daley, research director, Forrester Research.
The wireless technology market is past the early adopter stage. We are seeing it being implemented as de facto in education, and universities are now almost using it as standard. Even those that were slow to adopt, such as financial services companies, are picking up, because they see the increased efficiency and speed of communication.
Gavin Blunt, principal internet protocol communications consultant, Logicalis
The price of wireless access points has not dropped as quickly as some people thought. But the enterprise is a different kettle of fish, and products have to have more security, reliability and availability built in. Prices have not fallen as quickly as anticipated, but there is more functionality and you get more for your money.
Adrian Drozd, senior analyst, Datamonitor
Many wireless technologies are designed to solve issues of location. It is about cost-efficiency and competitive advantage, because it helps reduce process costs associated with paper, and means activities can be undertaken at the site where they take place and information sent back to a central point or database.”
Andy Brown, European mobile programme manager, IDC
Wireless is fabulous, says Stephen Kyjak-Lane, general manager at the K-West hotel in London. The hotel, a member of the Landmark Group, took a phased approach to upgrading its voice and data network infrastructure, because it is a relatively small business.
“You can’t throw a massive amount of resource at it. Unless it is a new build, you have to plan for things over time,” says Kyjak-Lane.
“We had been looking for a long time for a way to streamline our guest services and to provide a more accurate and efficient service – and wireless has provided us with a very effective way to do that.”
The organisation began the process three years ago, when it introduced Philips Business Communications’ Sopho 2000 IPS hybrid IP and circuit-switched telephony system.
K-West previously relied on a single switchboard operator to take and forward calls. The hybrid system was integrated with KWest’s accounting applications, which meant that calls could be handled by a broader range of staff to improve response times, or routed directly to individuals looking after particular functions, such as reservations.
The second stage, undertaken last year, provided employees with Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications (Dect) telephones, which were considered more cost-effective than IP and less likely to generate long-term health issues than mobile phones.
The move allowed customers to call hotel staff directly to request room service, or engineers for repair work. It also meant that three engineers could be redeployed to other parts of the hotel, which consequently reduced costs.
The third phase of the project also began last year. K-West agreed to become a test site for Philips’ Virtual Butler system, and rollout is scheduled to be complete by next month.
Virtual Butler works by routing customer calls to an operator, who sends a text message from the computer to an engineer’s phone for any jobs that need doing.
The engineer sends a message back to the operator once the repair is complete. But if there has been no response within 20 minutes, the operator is alerted and contacts the engineer.
“It is a way of constantly reminding colleagues to do things in a timely fashion,’ says Kyjak-Lane. With the high cost of payroll in the hotel trade and the need to provide good-quality customer service 24 hours a day to stay competitive, it is also a means of maximising productivity levels per employee. “If customers ring for room service at four in the morning, it is probably not the best use of resource to have someone answer where English is not their first language, which is often the case,” says Kyjak-Lane.
Employees speaking fluent English are in a position to take a customer’s order and create an opportunity to generate incremental revenue by suggesting additional orders. “It makes customers happier because they feel they have been looked after, and customer satisfaction is an important differentiator in the hotel sector,” says Kyjak-Lane.
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