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Accelerating wireless in Enterprises

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CIOL Bureau
Updated On
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According to META Group, 50% of enterprises will

have wireless e-mail in place within two or three years, which will spark a run

on wireless application projects. However, most projects will concentrate on

some form of targeted field-force automation (e.g., route delivery, service,

field sales, and asset management) that is an extension of an existing

environment, rather than general-purpose mobile infrastructure.

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"Despite the challenges of

less-than-universal wide-area wireless coverage, we have seen a renewed interest

in deploying wireless applications during the past six months, as companies are

beginning to spend again," said Jack Gold, wireless industry analyst at

META Group.

"The downside is that this is putting

increased pressure on already burdened IT organizations to support users on

various devices such as notebooks, tablet PCs, PDAs, and smart phones," he

added.

To ease the influx of predicted wireless

application projects, enterprises are considering platform vendors such as IBM,

SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft to expedite the processes. However, Gold advises

enterprises to implement these projects with an overall view of strategic

architecture and enterprise security to maximize return on investment.

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Home Networking Hits it Big



Home networking entered the mainstream in 2003 and early 2004, as large

numbers of broadband users installed home networks to share Internet connections

and electronics vendors delivered new products to send high-value entertainment

content over the network. According to In-Stat/MDR (http://www.instat.com), the

continued need for broadband sharing and a growing interest in entertainment

networking will drive the total value of equipment with a home networking

connection of some type from $8.3 billion in 2004 to $17.1 billion by 2008.

"The emergence of media networking continues

to be the most exciting part of the home networking market," according to

Mike Wolf, Principal Consumer Connectivity and Content Analyst with In-Stat/MDR.

"Many vendors have announced or released media networking products to

connect entertainment devices to networks in order to share audio and video

content around the home. We expect Microsoft's Media Center Extender technology

to accelerate this trend going forward into 2005."

In-Stat/MDR has also found that Asia will eclipse

North America for the region with the most home networks by 2008, rising from

27% of all home networks worldwide in 2004 to 36% in 2008, with North America

dropping from 46% to 34% in the same time span.

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Hard Drive Possibility for Smartphones



Tiny hard disc drives will allow high-end "smartphones" to reach

their full potential by allowing massive local storage for enterprise

applications, according to research published by IDC.

But the phones using these hard discs will not be

for everyone, as they are likely to be slower, heavier, easier to break and more

power-hungry than their counterparts with flash memory.

Figures from IDC and Gartner also showed that

sales of traditional handheld computers are levelling off, while smartphone

sales are booming.

IDC said that demand for storage on phones will

be driven by increasing network bandwidth with the rollout of 3G systems. Hard

discs will make mobile phones more useful for music, imaging and reference

applications.

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