Many of us can't live without our cell phones or personal digital assistants (PDAs). These small devices have become an extension of ourselves — clipped to our belts or stashed in a purse — and have become our personal connections to the rest of the world. So dependent upon these gadgets are we that we feel lost without them.
The same can be said for the laptop computer, a travel companion we stow away in a briefcase to act as our work platform while we are out of the office. There's no such thing as individual downtime. Documents can be reviewed, reports can be written, and e-mails can be read while we are on planes, trains, or in hotels.
Because of the convenience of being able to communicate wherever and whenever we want, wireless devices have become integral to our personal and work lives, providing an important tool not only in the enterprise, but also in the factory, the field, and the warehouse. Today, plant managers can be alerted to a problem in production via a digital feed to their PDAs; service technicians can be guided to an off-site service call using a GPS system in the truck; and warehouse workers can track inventory by means of radio frequency identification (RFID).
It is an increasingly wireless world we live in, but this untethered world is anything but homogeneous, uniform, or seamless. It is, instead, a mixed bag of technologies — cellular towers, satellite, WiFi, WiMAX, wireless Ethernet, sensor-based networks, and multiple bands of radio waves — that supports a wide variety of early applications in asset management, location tracking, and remote diagnosis of equipment, to name a few.
The problem is that wireless has emerged in a slapdash sort of way, unsystematically placed in areas of the organization where only individual groups can benefit. However, as manufacturers try to drive as much efficiency into the enterprise as possible, they have the unenviable task of having to manage this mishmash of technological approaches. And it is not just the wireless infrastructure, but the devices as well — Blackberries in the sales force; Nextel walkie-talkies in the warehouse; RFID tags in the supply chain; Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM laptops in the field; and rugged Motorola mobile computers in the factory.
These mobile devices are designed for specific wireless networks that use various standards and communications protocols, adding another layer of complexity for IT departments responsible for supporting them. As a result of the wireless overload on IT departments, users of the devices often take control of application development and maintenance, leading to tactical deployments that don't take into consideration overarching business processes. Ultimately, observers say, this is limiting wireless technology's ability to play a strategic role in the enterprise.
"One of the problems with the mobile office is it has evolved in chaos," says Randy Mears, a member of the EDS Fellows program. To truly benefit from all that the untethered infrastructure has to offer, IT organizations must find a way to centrally manage it, providing the appearance of a unified wireless landscape, he says.
Wireless is evolving much like PCs did, Mears says, when departments bought their own computers and solved their own problems because they didn't want to wait for IT departments bogged down with mainframe maintenance chores. IT departments eventually gained control over PCs, promulgating corporate standards around type and brand allowed on the corporate network and centrally managing assets. The same will happen with wireless networks and mobile devices, Mears believes.
The days of the wild, wild West in wireless are far from over, but there have been developments that promise greater order. Wireless technology suppliers are responding with new, multifunctional devices that integrate various capabilities. Motorola's MC9000, for example, can read both RFID tags and bar codes, and Research In Motion's new Blackberry 8820 includes WiFi access in addition to cellular. While these devices may ease the cost of ownership by not requiring users to purchase separate devices for every application, or by leveraging the free corporate WiFi network versus paying for minutes on a cellular network, the real mechanism that will move the mobile enterprise forward is the ability to tie disparate wireless networks together.
To that end, the next big thing in wireless is the creation of a connected infrastructure.
"We are at the stage now where we have a number of networks to do things, but, ultimately, we are trying to get to the point where there is one network that does everything," Mears says. "Once we are at that point, it doesn't matter if there are different solutions and devices involved, because it's all centrally managed. Isn't that where you want to be?"
That's a good question: As a manufacturer, where do you want to be? Perhaps the better question is: Can mobility be used to create a strategic advantage for your company? The answer: Yes, but there's more work to be done. Obviously, you'll want to tap into the wireless technology that already exists within the organization, but this time start with a plan.
First, conduct a survey or audit to understand the topology currently in the facility, and use this as an opportunity to bring IT and automation groups together. More important, as with any strategic initiative, figure out the real business need behind mobility. The "killer app" may be the one that will transform the company from a high mix of point solutions to an enterprise that experiences true "connectedness."
If done correctly, the benefit should be obvious. "The plan should include things like the fact that when people are untethered, less time is wasted walking back and forth," says Cliff Whitehead, manager of strategic applications at Rockwell Automation, referring specifically to a day in the life of a worker on the factory floor.
But that same productivity theory can be applied in the enterprise and to people working remotely. "Peel back the layers to get a feel for how much more productive mobility will make an individual, and what you'll do with the incremental gain you get from that productivity," Whitehead says. "Think about how you'll redeploy people and feed the benefit back to the shareholders. It's a lofty goal, but that's where it's going."
In Search of the Killer App
Some people say wireless, in and of itself, is the killer application. But others say such a characterization may confuse infrastructure with the capabilities provided by that infrastructure. Clues to what may be possible can be found in such concepts as "hyperconnectivity," a mega-trend that wireless provider Nortel refers to as the explosion of devices and users connecting to the network. The other concept kicked around of late is "unified communications," which Microsoft, in a partnership with Nortel, describes as making it easy and manageable for people to access information in the way they want it.
As back-end systems such as ERP and supply chain management move toward Web services and event-driven workflows, it is increasingly important to always be connected. So the killer application in the next phase of mobility may be something we already have. "It's real-time communications," says Kyle Klassen, Nortel's director of enterprise wireless marketing.
In today's electronic world, most people are accustomed to leaving a voice-mail message or sending an e-mail and then waiting perhaps days for a response. In the vision of the mobile enterprise, communication will happen immediately, but only when technological unification occurs, advocates of this approach say.
Communications have grown up in the enterprise much like control technologies have in the factory — often as islands of isolated automation. Similarly, "think of different silos of communication in the infrastructure," says Shola Aluko, senior product manager for Microsoft's Unified Communications effort. "Wireless, Internet, phone infrastructure — putting all of this together is really the magic of unified communications."
Microsoft's "magic" comes in the form of Office Communication Server, which uses Exchange Server 2007 as the central repository for e-mail, instant messaging, Web conferencing, and voice. "People can communicate in whatever mode they want," Aluko says. And they can do it in real time because of another Microsoft application called Presence, which is linked to the Outlook calendar to identify whether a person is available and at his or her desk, in the office but on a phone call, or out of the office and reachable via cell phone, for example.
"It's the ability to know where someone is and speed business communication," says Adam Glick, Microsoft's Exchange technical product manager. "Through Exchange, they can choose the best way to make a connection, rather than playing e-mail ping-pong."
Glick says the strategic advantage behind this approach is that it lets manufacturers move faster than their competitors. But some companies may not be thinking about real-time communications as a competitive edge. For most manufacturers, the focus has been on integrating shop floor and enterprise systems to share data in real time, using wireless as a catalyst to gather data from the shop floor, not for communication. In addition, companies that have adopted wireless technologies are plagued by issues of security and a lack of interoperability.
"There is no single radio frequency architecture, and if you cobble things together in a haphazard fashion, strange things can happen," says Hesh Kagan, director of technology marketing services at Invensys Process Systems.
For that reason, many manufacturers have been using wireless very purposefully to date. Take Ce De Candy Inc., the maker of Smarties candy. The manufacturer implemented a wireless solution a year ago, and the move came out of necessity.
"We were more or less forced to do this in order to comply with the FDA Bioterrorism Act," says Rick DePinto, Ce De Candy's IT manager based in Union, N.J. As part of the FDA regulation, food manufacturers are required to maintain records that allow complete traceability for all raw goods and manufactured products.
To meet the mandate, DePinto last year installed Motorola's wireless switch and access ports working with the Motorola MC9000 mobile computer running tracing software from Portable Technology Solutions. This was the first time in the company's 60-year history that it had ever used wireless.
"This is an old-fashioned, family-owned company, and they like the way their business runs," DePinto says. "It's hard to change things." Any new technology brought in can't be disruptive to the way the business is run, he says. In the past, wireless was untested and, therefore, too risky a proposition.
On the other hand, many large manufacturers in the aerospace, automotive, chemical, and oil and gas industries were sold on wireless a long time ago as a way to mitigate the cost of installing network cabling, as well as a convenient way to gather data from field devices. But even these companies are struggling to find the value in wireless beyond asset performance monitoring and tracking.
Some companies, however, recognize the potential of adding remote capabilities to open the door to new business opportunities. Take Cooper Bussmann, a global supplier of circuit protection devices, which has added a wireless component to its products that provides remote monitoring for customers.
Consumers of Cooper Bussmann's fuses are factories, and the biggest issue they deal with is downtime. To ensure that its circuits are up and running, the company created Intelligent Fuse Monitors and Intelligent Circuit Monitors, battery-powered devices that transmit changes in status via wireless mesh routers. Information is transmitted back to a data center using technology from Questra Corp., a purveyor of intelligent device management software. When an alert is triggered, an automated voice message calls maintenance personnel. If there is no answer, the call is elevated to the plant supervisor.
"We have a different slant on mobility," says Joe Fox, Cooper Bussmann's director of systems and services. "In our case, it's that factories are doing more with less. Qualified electrical personnel that need to respond to events aren't sitting around drinking coffee; they are afoot somewhere. We call them and tell them an electrical event happened and where, what the replacement fuse is they need when they arrive, and what level of protective equipment they need to have with them."
It is a slightly different slant than, say, the unified communication effort in the enterprise, but the message is the same: meeting the need to connect in real time.
Managing the Unwired Enterprise
Nortel recently launched a vision it calls The Unwired Enterprise. It focuses on greater wireless coverage, a simplified infrastructure that integrates networks without duplicating security and management, and seamless mobility that infuses workflows regardless of whether the network is an indoor WLAN, mesh network, or outdoor broadband network.
The vision is centered on the soon-to-be-released WLAN IEEE standard 802.11, the next generation of WiFi that is capable of raw data speeds of up to 540Mbps. Based on this standard, Nortel plans to introduce a new product portfolio in 2008, when the standard is expected to be ratified. New access points will be highly scalable wireless switching structures that can be managed with traditional wired Ethernet, not separately.
Similar efforts are under way at Motorola, which recently introduced the RFS7000 RF Switch that can handle WiFi, RFID, mesh, voice-over-wireless LAN, WiMAC, and the emerging 802.11n standard. (For more details on these terms, see Glossary of Wireless Terms.)
On the other hand, some companies have bought into multiple external carrier services — such as those from AT&T, Sprint, or Verizon — that they'd like to leverage in the enterprise. (Read about services available from two of the big carriers.) Companies such as MobileAccess can extend these services into a building, converting the carrier signal to radio frequency over fiber optics while managing multiple signals and services. "Our infrastructure takes signals that might be available on the outside and distributes them evenly throughout the internal part of the building," says Lou Martinage, MobileAccess' director of marketing and business development.
Mix and Match
The bottom line is that no one wireless technology will prevail. As a result, vendors are finding ways to mix and match, as should manufacturers because the needs of assembly line workers, engineers, executives, and sales associates are all different.
"Mobility brings such an assortment of devices quickly to the forefront that you have to pay attention to what you are doing," says EDS' Mears. To some extent, users — not IT — will dictate what devices are needed, which is a paradigm shift from the way IT currently operates. Yet, IT will ultimately be responsible and will establish rules to avoid potential network clashes or communications chaos. "We still need an organization to manage this whole set of technology," Mears says.
IT is the obvious choice for having management responsibility because, regardless of the carrier used to support mobility outside the walls of the corporation or the wireless technology used inside the organization, the back-end systems will ultimately tie everything together.
"Part of the killer application is what is happening on the back-end systems," says Tyler Lessard, director of ISV Alliances for Research In Motion. "You can't look at mobile devices in isolation. You'll get the most value and true ROI when there is seamless interaction with back-end systems ... If you don't have a good supply chain management system, adding a wireless device won't solve the problem," he says.
Enterprise software vendors are making strides in this area. For example, all of Oracle's applications are fully Internet-enabled, which means they can be turned into mobile applications accessible by laptops. In addition, Oracle's Fusion middleware includes the Sensor Edge Server, designed to work with wireless networks and technology, including RFID. And, the Oracle Lite database is designed to run with small-footprint mobile devices.
"We have the capability to support mobile data capture for any transportation assets and moving materials," says Jon Chorley, Oracle's vice president of supply chain management product strategy. "We also embed alerts, which can be pushed to any phone system in a text or e-mail message. That's the key part of mobility, informing decision makers when exception conditions occur."
The other key aspect of mobility is the ability to move freely between wireless networks. That's where companies like MobileAware come in. MobileAware provides a software layer that can work with devices such as the new Blackberry 8820 to configure device behavior to use the free WiFi network as much as possible. The key to MobileAware — and perhaps the key to mobility in the future — is the fact that it plugs into Web services and service-oriented architectures to manage intelligent communications and messaging in the enterprise.
"There is no concern on underlying network issues; rather, it focuses on business processes," says Brian Kinane, executive vice president and chief strategy officer at MobileAware.
Marrying wireless technology with business processes through Web services is what will finally fill the mobility gap. But that's a tall order, and it could take a long time to catch on. It is, however, an inevitable evolution of networking. After all, work is something we do, regardless of where we are. People don't stand still, and neither should the network infrastructure.
See The Mobile Enterprise — Needed: Greater Reliability.