In-Depth

Wireless DevelopmentJoining the wireless world

• By John K. Waters
• January 1, 2001

If there is an IT industry buzzword right now that is hotter than "wireless," word has not yet reached the ears of this writer. Industry watchers note that the term now rivals the power once commanded by ".com" to snare the attention and stir the imagination of corporate executives and IT managers. The promise offered by the emerging technologies clustered under this rubric is compelling, and it will not be long before virtually every enterprise will want the ability to access information and transact business beyond the constraints of wires and cables.

Corporate IT has been looking at wireless technology for several years now without actually doing much. Beyond the widespread use of pagers and cell phones, wirelessness has yet to have a real impact on the enterprise. A recent Meta Group study found that less than 5% of all corporations currently have a wireless application in place. The promise of wireless did not meet reality, and plans were forced to wait until technology advances to levels that now appear imminent.

Immature wireless networking technologies, and devices and software that are difficult to implement on a large scale have held back acceptance for years. Experts now say that the devices, some emerging software and new wireless networking schemes are convincing IT managers to take a closer and more serious look at implementing a system.

Experts say evidence of an impending wireless explosion is definitely strong. For example, Boston-based Aberdeen Group, a technology researcher, predicts that by 2004, 74 million people around the world will have wireless access to the Web. GartnerGroup, a research firm based in Stamford, Conn., predicts that 700 million cell phones will be in use worldwide by 2003, and 80% of those will have access to the Internet. Analysts at AMR Research, Boston, foresee a range of packaged application developers, ranging from suppliers of traditional ERP systems to e-commerce specialists, expanding product lines to include wireless technologies. Observers note that many systems integrators are rushing to add wireless practices to their offerings. And a whole new class of mobile specialists is looking to dominate the industry.

"That's a hell of a capability," said industry analyst Ken Dulaney, vice president of mobile computing at GartnerGroup, "and someone is going to figure out how to use it."

"If I were an IT manager," advised Joe Owen, CEO of XcelleNet, Alpharetta, Ga., a maker of software for managing wireless systems, "I'd be past the tire-kicking stage by now and at least experimenting with some kind of wireless implementation."

Good advice, experts say, but easier said than done. IT managers wading into the wonderful world of wireless quickly find themselves hip-deep in a river of diverse devices, sinking in a swamp of system protocols and positively drowning in acronyms. To make educated decisions for their organizations, they need to understand key concepts about a computing paradigm that is very much a work in progress, an immature market and a group of technologies that are still evolving.

"We've seen wireless deployed in public Internet companies for some time," said Jacob Christfort, vice president of product development and chief technical officer at Oracle Mobile, a division of Redwood Shores, Calif.-based Oracle Corp. Christfort is charged with building and hosting wireless applications for businesses. "But it's true that wireless [technology] hasn't been taken up in the enterprise nearly as fast. The problem is the complexity that IT managers have to manage."

The following overview is designed for organizations ready to dip their toes into the wireless torrent for the first time. It covers most of the wireless basics—systems, networks, devices, software and services—IT managers need to know about. And it includes some recommendations from industry analysts and vendors for implementing effective wireless strategies.

This is not everything you need to know, of course, but it is not a bad place to start.

Fixed, mobile or broadband
For this story, "wireless" refers to an array of products and standards that enable communications without, well, wires. That covers a lot of territory, and the term as it is being bandied about today is almost too general to be useful. Obviously a cellular telephone is a wireless device, but so are a garage door opener, a TV remote control and a baby monitor.

"There are so many definitions of 'wireless,'" said Bill O'Farrell, CEO of OpenAir.com, Boston, a provider of professional service automation applications using an application service provider (ASP) model. "It's amazing to me that anyone understands any of this. Do you mean a cell phone? A PalmPilot? A PC? It's totally confusing." OpenAir Wireless is a companion service to OpenAir.com, a company that makes it easier for Wireless Application Protocol (WAP)-enabled phone users to log hourly, flat rate, mileage and expense TimeBills in real time.

The maturity of some execs notwithstanding, IT managers will not be spending much time with the baby monitors. But they will be dealing with a variety of wireless systems, including fixed, mobile and broadband wireless.

A fixed wireless system provides access to public voice and data networks through the use of wireless communications technology. "Fixed" refers to the stationary devices that make up the system. "Point-to-point" systems require a pair of antennas with no obstructions in between.

Mobile wireless refers, of course, to the use of wireless systems for connecting untethered devices, such as cell phones, laptops and PDAs.

"Point-to-multipoint" systems connect fixed wireless devices with mobile devices via several large antennas communicating with smaller receivers. "Portable wireless" is a term sometimes used to describe systems of autonomous, battery-powered devices outside the enterprise, including handheld cell phones and PCS units.

Fixed wireless devices are usually plugged into the local power grid; whereas mobile or portable wireless devices tend to be battery-powered. Although mobile and portable systems can be used in fixed locations, efficiency and bandwidth are compromised compared with fixed systems. Mobile or portable, battery-powered wireless systems can serve as emergency backups for fixed systems in case of a power blackout or natural disaster.

Finally, wireless broadband is used to describe wireless systems that transmit at higher rates. Wireless connections are generally slower than wireline systems. A land-based broadband system transmits at speeds in the T1 range and above. Wireless connections are considered broadband if they reach or exceed 250 kbps.

Wireless broadband connections are usually described as "fixed broadband," because they are only available in fixed wireless systems. It is really an extension of the point-to-point, wireless-LAN-bridging concept. The idea is to deliver high-speed and high-capacity connectivity that can be used for voice, multimedia and Internet access services. Wireless broadband is mainly used for connecting LANs to the Internet, but it may be used to connect multiple services (data, voice, video) over the same connection.

Getting started
Before any enterprise begins the process of evaluating the specific components of a wireless system, it should take some time to evaluate its own requirements and personnel. In other words, handing out BlackBerry wireless devices to the sales staff is not much of a wireless strategy.

"The first thing you need to think about is what really makes sense for your business," said Christfort. "I think that is where most people—particularly technical people—go wrong. Very often they are focused on the idea of, 'Are there some technologies that can I can buy that will automatically take some stock mobile?' What they end up doing is taking some applications mobile without considering the end users, and it ends up not working."

Christfort advises IT managers to remember that mobile technologies represent more than simply a different protocol, markup language and set of devices; it is also a completely different use context.

"You can't just think about taking the same stuff and shoving it into a mobile device," he said. "CIOs who really get it ask themselves what information their people in the field most often find themselves without. That's the information that you really want to deliver wirelessly."

Peter Firstbrook, research analyst with Stamford, Conn.-based Meta Group, agreed: "You have to start with the information and the people. What information do you have that is both highly valuable and highly variable? E-mail fits that category. Then you have to ask where [the people] are. And only then can you start thinking about what you'll need to get the information out to them."

A growing number of enterprises are extending the availability of corporate data and other high-value information to workers in the field through wireless systems. Wireless connectivity provides a remote link to the Internet, E-mail, corporate databases and other public and personal information.

A typical wireless system is made up of several components, including mobile computing devices, modems, middleware and networks. All components of a wireless system should be evaluated in terms of a company's specific needs and requirements.

Mobile computing devices
Mobile computing devices are everywhere these days. With millions of workers doing business far from the office, it is no wonder. Hardware developers have created a veritable cornucopia of untethered devices—from laptops to handhelds to smartphones—any of which IT managers may find themselves called upon to support with wireless connectivity. Many of these devices come with built-in wireless modems, or fit easily into add-ons. And they come ready to run wireless applications.

Deciding which devices to support can be a real challenge. Unlike desktop machines, which are relatively unvarying in form and function, mobile devices come with a wide range of features, functions and purposes. And the costs of these gizmos can vary just as widely, from a $200 pager to an $8,000 ruggedized laptop.

Enterprises will want to take into consideration the following factors to evaluate which mobile devices are appropriate for them: durability, form factor, battery life, operating system and support for peripheral devices.

Because the device is mobile and gets lugged around far from the safety of the office desktop, durability is almost the primary consideration. The precise durability required of the device depends on just how far from that desktop it will travel and how it will be used in the field. Will it spend most of its time nestled in the cozy inside pocket of a Brooks Brothers suitcoat, or will it be bouncing along muddy fields in the back seat of a Jeep? IT managers should carefully consider environmental elements such as physical shock, temperature extremes, exposure to water and the quality of the display in bright light.

The form factor also depends on the planned use for the wireless device, experts say. Managers should carefully evaluate the required size and weight, the ease of use and the input system, that is, buttons, keyboards or styli. There will be tradeoffs, which can best be made by researching a variety of issues, such as weight versus button size.

User opinions count here, too. Users are the ones that will be using the devices on a day-to-day basis. Buying a PDA for an individual is a lot like buying that person a pen—and you know what it is like to get stuck working with a pen you just do not like.

"People say that the problem with mobile is that there's not enough bandwidth to get the information to the devices," said Christfort. "That's crap. The screens on the devices are too small to support huge lumps of information. But you don't need big screens and WAP phones that display full-color Web pages. Keep in mind that, to make this work profitably, all you need to do is get a few critical pieces of information at the right time. Getting timely and accurate information into the hands of people who need it to make decisions is what this is all about."

Battery life can be a critical consideration, depending on how long the users of the system must operate the devices away from the power grid. Battery types are another consideration. If you are using a Palm V and the lithium ion battery starts to die, you need access to the charging cradle; if you are using a Palm III, you just pop in a couple of flashlight batteries and carry on.

If it is the type of device that recharges, it is important to consider how long it takes, whether it can plug into a car's cigarette lighter to be charged and whether it has a portable battery charger. Managers must also determine whether the modem can utilize the device's battery.

A continuing lack of standards makes selecting a mobile operating system a very tricky process for IT managers. There's little uniformity right now among disparate mobile device operating systems - and there are many more options than one might think. Proprietary systems abound, from Palm Inc.'s Palm OS to Windows CE from Microsoft Corp. When choosing mobile devices, managers must consider both the power of the OS and its compatibility with the applications they intend to run on it; they also have to do some guesswork about its future.

The decision also requires managers to understand all current and potential future application requirements. The decision must take into account any application's processor speed, RAM and hard-drive space requirements. In addition, managers must determine whether a system can support standard or proprietary specialized peripheral devices.

Choosing the correct modem is a key decision for ensuring a successful wireless strategy. Managers can choose from a host of modem technologies, including integrated, on-board modems and systems that can plug into modem modules. Many mobile devices are designed to work with specific wireless networks and have modems that support them exclusively. Others offer a world of choice among networks. The selection process should include a comparison of power requirements, whether an internal or external model is preferred, and replacement issues.

IT managers must remember that development and software considerations are the key factors in building a wireless network. "Hardware is important, certainly," said Gartner's Dulaney. "But too many people decide on the hardware up front. They don't consider preserving their software. But the software is going to be their most important investment—especially in an environment in which their hardware and user preferences are changing like crazy."

Mobile middleware
Chances are a corporate wireless system will be called upon to support more than one type of mobile device: laptops, cell phones, pagers and a few wireless PDAs thrown in just to irritate you. One way out of the proprietary OS/application dilemma is through a variety of emerging mobile middleware systems coming from established middleware suppliers and start-up developers (see related story, "Legacy goes wireless"). Middleware can provide platform independence and allow your applications to be ported to varying devices.

Middleware is, by definition, an enabling layer of software that resides between the applications, the heterogeneous operating systems, hardware platforms and communication protocols. Wireless middleware performs the same function in a wireless system. It creates a third tier in the system architecture that frees the applications from dependencies. The technology is designed to shield developers from the intricacies of a system's "plumbing" and enable communication between disparate networks.

Experts say wireless middleware can hide the complexity of wireless communications with simple APIs that make it easy to develop and deploy mobile applications. The technology can also offer support for multiple networks or operating systems, providing a common API.

But no matter how effective, Christfort warned, no middleware technology can circumvent the need for careful analysis of a company's mobile data needs.

"There are lots of companies out there with this middleware pitch that leaves people believing that they don't have to do anything to their existing applications [to make them mobile]," he said. "That's overselling it, and it's just not realistic. People have to understand that they have to do some work here. They really have to think about what kind of information is going to make a difference to the business in the hands of their [remote] employees."

Wireless application gateways
Gartner's Dulaney tracks a specific kind of wireless middleware called wireless application gateways, a term Gartner coined for a group of products that use XML and W3C-defined stylesheeting to provide a single interface for wireless applications.

"A big problem with wireless is the proliferation of dissimilar form factors, and the dissimilar resource characteristics that exist on these devices," Dulaney said. "Wireless application gateways adapt content to a particular device."

Dulaney points to the way in which many organizations implement the enormously popular BlackBerry wireless handheld E-mail device from Waterloo, Ont.-based Research in Motion Ltd. as an example: "When people put BlackBerries into their [organizations], they typically put in a BlackBerry server, with links to Exchange, for example. Although it is a good product, that is exactly what companies should not do. That server is dedicated to supporting that one device over that one particular network.

"If you put in a wireless application gateway instead, you would be able to service the BlackBerry and any other devices wanting access to Exchange, as well as devices wanting access to other types of content, such as Web or database content."

Dulaney said that enterprises that do not adopt this kind of platform-neutral approach to their wireless implementations, will, in just a few years, find themselves managing 30 or 40 servers that deliver specific content through specific networks to specific devices.

"The sheer number of different formats and operating systems and networks is going to overwhelm any IT shop," he said.

Some of the 20+ vendors currently providing wireless application gateways include:

• IBM Corp.
• Brience Inc., San Francisco
• ViaFone Inc., Redwood City, Calif.
• AlterEgo Networks, Redwood City, Calif.
• NetMorf Inc., Boston
• iConverse, Waltham, Mass.

"The software is your most important investment," said Dulaney. "Your basic strategy should be to assume that you must build robust applications that can deal with any content delivered through any network to any device."

Wireless networks
Wireless networks can provide the connectivity among devices in a wireless system, and they come in a number of shapes, sizes and frequencies, experts say. "The network is one of the critical decisions you'll be making in this process," said Firstbrook. "Most of them are between nine and 19 kilobits.

Personal Area Networks (PANs) are wireless networks that can be installed within small office spaces, in which the connected devices are in close proximity. Today's PAN technologies include IrDA (infrared), which requires "line-of-sight" between the devices, usually a few feet apart, and Bluetooth, which supports multipoint, close-proximity wireless connectivity without the line-of-sight requirement.

"I think that Bluetooth is going to be one of the most important wireless technologies going forward," predicted Christfort. "IrDA is the Iridium of local area networking. It won't be around much longer."

Wireless Local-Area Networks (LANs) cover a greater area than PANs. But just like wired LANs, the enhanced systems can connect devices only within a contained geographical area, such as a corporate headquarters campus or a factory complex. Industry analysts at GartnerGroup expect that the market for installed wireless LANs will approach $35.8 billion by 2004.

In a sense, wireless LANs are bypassing the wide-area services the same way that cell phone service made satellite services like Iridium moot before they ever got deployed. Within a year most of the high-traffic areas like airports and convention centers will have wireless LAN access.

A Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) is designed to interconnect users with computer resources within a specific area. MANs cover an area larger than LANs, but smaller than Wide-Area Networks (WANs). The term is used to describe the interconnection of networks in a city into a single larger network.

MetriCom Inc., San Jose, Calif., maker of the Ricochet wireless modem, operates wireless MANs in about 14 cities, including San Francisco, Seattle and Washington D.C., to support only its Ricochet offering. Although it is restricted to downtown cores, it runs at a relatively blazing 128 kbps. MetriCom plans to have its networks rolled out to 48 major cities by the end of 2001, officials said.

Wireless WANs are said to offer cable-free connectivity beyond the coverage of a LAN. WANs can be private or public, and can be connected through leased lines or satellites. A wireless WAN offers connection rates ranging from 8 Kbps to 28.8 Kbps and can provide citywide or nationwide coverage. Typically, users are charged fees for airtime or the amount of data transmitted.

CDPD or SMR networks give wireless connectivity to courier drivers and police officers. The current trend is toward shared public networks, such as BellSouth. Typically, a wireless WAN consists of two or more wireless LANs.

"Last mile" refers to the connection between the customer and the telephone or cable company. The last mile has traditionally used copper-based telephone wire or coaxial cable, but wireless technologies offer alternative options in some locations.

It is not unusual to hear WAN solution vendors describing the "last mile" as anywhere from the last few hundred feet to the last 50 miles.

In many communities, last-mile technology represents a major remaining challenge to high-bandwidth applications such as on-demand television, fast Internet access and Web pages full of multimedia effects.

Satellites
Satellites—first used for intercontinental telecommunications before undersea fiber was available and for communication in remote areas, including islands and oceangoing ships—can facilitate wireless communications. By the end of 1997, more than 180 communications satellites had been deployed and the business today represents a sizeable and growing industry.

Geosynchronous satellites are set up to 22,300 miles above ground. They revolve around the earth at the same rate as the planet itself and can facilitate wireless communications. One frequency band is used for the satellite uplink, and another for the downlink. Satellites are great for data transmission, but not so hot for voice because of the time it takes for an electrical signal to make the trip into space and back. It only takes a half second, but that is enough of a lag that users notice it during a phone conversation.

Low-Earth Orbit satellites (LEOs) orbit at up to 900 miles above the earth and can communicate directly with handheld earthbound telephones. Because of their low orbit, these satellites move across the sky at high speeds, so they frequently need to hand off a call to a second satellite just rising over the horizon. Each LEO acts like the cell site, catching the call from earth and passing it to an earth-based switching system. Industry watchers expect to see 1,700 additional LEO systems deployed by 2005.

Wireless supply chain
"We have to say that [wireless] is a good technology for the long term," said Dulaney. "People will want to have access to information anytime anywhere, so it's going to happen. We do have to wait for things to mature. The networks have to get better, faster and more available. The devices have to be more stable. For now, we still have to glue a bunch of pieces together and it's still very complex to get it done."

Dennis Gaughan and Randy Weston, analysts at Boston-based AMR Research, believe one area where wireless systems currently impact the enterprise is in supply chain management. In a recent report, they wrote: "Maintaining strong relationships with a growing network of suppliers is a key component of a successful e-business. In addition to an organization's traditional supply base, there is a growing list of trading exchanges available to procure goods. As organizations look to minimize their inventory and streamline their supply chain, visibility becomes an essential factor for success."

Specifically, the two analysts point to an emerging class of supply chain management application called Supply Chain Event Management (SCEM). SCEM applications from vendors like Categoric Software Corp., Sterling, Va., or Vigilance Inc., Sunnyvale, Calif., are designed to smooth out potentially costly kinks in the supply chain. Dramatic glitches that cannot wait for E-mail—say, a steel supplier suddenly not being able to fulfill an automaker's order, without which production stops—can instantly be announced via (WAP) phones or two-way pagers. In this example, one manufacturer can turn to another quickly enough to keep the assembly line rolling. In an industry where production stoppages can cost a company millions of dollars, say AMR analysts, this kind of application will quickly become essential.

Gaughan and Weston also expect wireless to find its way into many other areas of business during the next two years. Areas such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and systems integration are ripe for the technology, they say. "Expect to see a lot of real work in the market in the coming year," said Weston. "The time for hype has passed. Now it's time to deliver the goods."

Beyond the promise—or hype—of wireless technologies is the bottom line.

"Whenever you're thinking about adopting a new technology," said O'Farrell, "you have to ask yourself the only question that really matters: Is it going to help me do it better, faster, or cheaper? The fact that the technology is wireless is interesting, but all that matters at the end of the day is that it's helping someone get the job done."