Cisco has announced the findings of a new study that shows "significant productivity gains and increasing financial returns" to organisations that undertake wider wireless local area network (WLAN) deployment.
Conducted by independent research firm NOP World Technology, the report is an update of a similar study done in 2001 by Cisco and NOP World Technology. The respondent sample base consisted of 400 US-based medium and large organisations (100+ employees).
Show me the productivity
According to the study, wireless LANs gave users connectivity to the corporate network for much longer than wired LANs. Wireless users are, on average, connected for more than 3.5 hours longer than their wired counterparts per day. This has meant "up to 27% more productivity" for wireless users.
Greater productivity is also being realised with the flexibility in location brought about by wireless. The study points to increasing business implementation of wireless LANs in employees` homes, as well as significant hotspot usage while on the move.
"The result of this increasingly diverse work environment is flexibility, which has contributed to a reported time saving of almost 80 minutes per employee per work day."
Show me the money
Financial returns increase, the study finds, as WLANs are rolled out to more users and departments within organisations.
"Almost 25% of employees within mid-size and large organisations access the wireless LAN today, up from 16% in 2001. This increase in deployment, plus the reported additional time savings, resulted in the rise in annual dollar value of time saved per employee to almost $14 000 today, up from just over $7 000 in 2001."
IT respondents in the study predict that 50% of employees will have access to the wireless LAN in the next two years.
Other benefits reported include "greater accuracy in everyday tasks". The "anytime, anywhere" flexibility of connectivity means information is entered at the point of gathering, for instance a patient`s bedside.
Gartner predicts that by 2005, 80% of all commercial notebooks will have an 802.11 interface (0.8 probability).
For a copy of the NOP World Technology survey report, visit the Cisco Web site.
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