The enterprise mobility market
Enterprises will accelerate wireless spending during the next two to three years, according to Meta Group as IT leaders see increased value in mobility.
Bjarne Munch, Meta’s senior communications analyst, said that although there is a lot of interest in mobility, the lack of suitable infrastructure is the major stumbling block.
“We’re still seeing infrastructure [development] this year as there is a lack of ubiquitous coverage,” Munch said. “We’re seeing initiatives from 3G mobile services but Three only has licences in the capital cities and not a fully national licence. I don’t see a focus on a reliable mobile service.” Munch said the key attributes of a mobile data network are reliability, ubiquity, and affordability.
“By the end of this year mobile access to corporate networks will heat up,” he said. “While [Wi-Fi] hotspots are not carrier-grade they provide access in a way that complements wired networks as GPRS won’t be sufficient outside major residential areas.”
According to Meta, 50 percent of enterprises will have wireless e-mail in place within two or three years, which will give rise to more wireless application projects. Most projects are concentrating on some form of field-force automation that is an extension of an existing environment. Munch said the rise of mobile broadband services is dogged by standards compliance.
“The thing about iBurst and Wimax is that it’s not widespread or standardized and that may be a few years away.
“Although a lot of notebooks have wireless already embedded, Intel’s support of Wimax is interesting. The key thing is that it must be easy for corporations to use wireless and the hotspot aggregators can provide this today.”
Munch firmly believes that until we see alternative technologies become pervasive the hotspots will dominate.
“Getting data from the [corporate] database to the screen must be easy and mobile office applications require more than e-mail as that’s the easy thing to do,” he said.
“The next step is mobilising CRM where there is a strong business case but you can’t assume there will always be a network. Applications need to have local storage and replicate it back. That’s an entire emerging market right now.”
Munch said the key developments over the next 12 months will involve looking for a more comprehensive solution and a more mature approach to mobile computing.