Wirelessly enabling enterprises difficult, but possible, panelists say at conference

The adoption of mobile wireless technologies within the enterprise is generally proceeding at a snail’s pace, but panelists at a conference late last month in Calgary said that despite implementation and deployment difficulties it is possible. Representatives from Colligo Networks, Sonic Mobility and Infowave Software discussed the challenges and lessons learned in deploying enterprise mobile applications at the Wireless Connections 2003 conference in a session titled Wireless in the Field and in the Trenches. Doug Lyons, director of account management at Colligo, talked about the challenges his company faced setting up a communications network for Pricewater-houseCoopers’ (PwC) off-site auditing work. PwC needed a communications platform for its auditors to share data while conducting audits at client sites. The problem, according to Lyons, was that the four or five auditors had to either dial-in to PwC’s corporate network to share files, swap floppy disks or align laptops for sharing of data via infrared ports. Colligo solved the problem by allowing the group of auditors to set up an ad-hoc collaborative network, based on 802.11b equipment. It offered them a system with which to share necessary data quickly, securely, regardless of location and without the need to connect to the corporate network. Calgary-based Sonic Mobility had an equally challenging enterprise deployment. The company was tasked with enabling the IT department of Los Angeles law firm Hennigan, Bennet & Dorman LLP to resolve computer network problems remotely. The company implemented its sonicadmin software system, which gave IT personnel full access to the corporate network and allowed them to perform full administrative functions such as system rebooting and changing passwords. Sonic Mobility CEO Derek Ball said that the IT department was outfitted with BlackBerry 6510 devices operating on Nextel’s wireless network. The result was that the law firm realized its return on investment (ROI) in a mere four weeks by allowing the lawyers to increase their billable hours. Microsoft Corp. recognized the potential of the sonicadmin product and last month licensed the product to drive its Windows Server 2003 Mobile Admin Pack. Infowave’s executive VP of sales and marketing Bill Tam explained how the company provided more than 200 mobile technicians from Avaya Inc. with mobile access to its customer relationship management system. Prior to implementing Infowave’s Wireless Business Engine middleware, the mobile technicians used dial-up and VPN systems that they generally accessed only twice a day. Following the mobile application implementation, Avaya realized its ROI in less than 12 months, Tam told conference dele-gates. While that was important to the company, "the real payback was in the significant improvement in employee productivity," he added. Generally, all three speakers found similar lessons to be learned from their experiences in deploying enterprise mobile systems. It may take more than a high ROI to convince an organization to pay for these kinds of solutions. Lyons said that in Colligo’s case the high ROI didn’t have the impact "we thought it would within the corporate IT department." If convincing the IT department is difficult, Lyons suggested inviting them to use the product in a trial with the hope they would become evangelists for the product, its capabilities and benefits. "You need to build expertise beyond your own product line," Tam said in noting another important lesson to be learned. Ball said matching the right device type with the application is also a key lesson. Each device has different capabilities and functionality and it is important to match the device to the application so it can effectively support the features of the application. The complete solution needs to include the right hardware matched with the right software, he added.

Wirelessly enabling enterprises difficult, but possible, panelists say at conference

News | 06/11/2003 4:00 am EDT

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