Is wireless the next networking trend?

By Grant Allan, Operational Services Director, Xantium Technology Holdings

The wireless industry has created a new competitive communications marketplace that is rapidly revolutionising and evolving the lifestyles of consumers. It's still perceived as 'new' in many instances, though the technology has been around for a number of years. The chAllan ge that faces South Africa is that this is still a relatively poorly marketed technology with many questions and perceived few definitive answers.

Many companies have made significant investment in terrestrial or copper networking, and to ensure the maximum return on that investment, need to 'sweat' the technology as far as is practical.

Therefore, their primary focus when examining wireless networks or mobile communication is to identify the area of business for application of the technology. Essentially the industry needs to define the role of the technology and apply it accordingly. CFO's are looking at IT systems from a very different perspective, given some of the overcapitalisation errors of the past. As a result, they need to be led and guided to the point where going wireless will have tangible benefit for their organisation, and not be led by another mass movement. Just because it's available, and adoption is picking up the pace, doesn't mean it's applicable and appropriate for every enterprise.

That being said, we do need to examine the efficiencies the business world has harvested out of pure cellular voice networks over the past years. Add voice with data, multimedia and permanent access to information systems to the equation, and you have a new-world revolution on your hands again in terms of how we go about our lives, both in the corporate and private space. This is, without question, the next wave that's already in motion.

A US-Based Technology group (NOP World-Technology) studied 300 U.S. companies that had wireless networks and found that wireless end users stayed connected to the corporate network an average of 1.75 hours more per day than other employees, resulting in average daily time savings of 70 minutes and a productivity increase of 22 percent.

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Given the return on investment, purely from a user-productivity perspective, the application of wireless technology is an attractive option for a cost-conscious entity.

More and more businesses are recognising that their next significant step in business productivity and efficiency will come from adding mobility or wireless networks to the applications that have become central to their daily working lives. As wireless carriers enable digital networks to carry communications across a wide array of devices from telephones, to computers, to personal digital assistants (PDAs), with research suggesting that these networks deliver over 1 billion text messages worldwide each day - the adoption of this technology is clear.

The bottom line impact is potentially massive, given the application of the technology in the right context, and ensuring that security and management are two more considerations, which are taken into account, over and above purchase and installation of the environment.

The reality is that many corporations don't even have their copper networks buttoned down - this is a good time to really apply a mindset and get serious about information security - regardless of the transport mechanism. Wireless will simply exacerbate an already delicate situation.

However, the moral here is that although a lot of innovation is seen in a local context, it's not necessarily industrial strength just yet and needs refinement. That is not to say that mobility should not be taken seriously and assimilated into new business thinking processes.