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Thursday, February 15, 2007
Sudesh Prasad
Wireless adoption in enterprises has been much talked about for the last few years. The pace of wireless adoption amongst enterprises has been very slow. In fact, till now, wireless adoption has been limited to enterprises providing some kind of wireless connectivity through laptop or mobile devices to its employees to ensure that they remain connected with their head offices. The good news now is that wireless is slowly becoming an integral part of an enterprise's overall IT and communication strategy. Enterprises are now opening up to the idea of taking services of specialized wireless solution providers so that they can plan wireless strategy accordingly. Falling prices of high-end mobile devices has also played an important role in the mainstreaming of mobility among enterprises. According to a recent analyst study the mobile enterprise application market reached $1.2 bn in 2005 and is forecast to grow to $3.5 bn in 2010.
CHANGING LANDSCAPE
Email and browsing used to be the only application till some time back. They too were not seamless. But that is not the case now. Several solution providers including some of the big names have gotten into the bandwagon of providing killer business applications for enterprises. In fact, there are lots of collaboration going on for this. For example, SAP closely works with industry leaders in the wireless arena including Intel, Panasonic, Microsoft, HP, and Nokia among others. Companies are increasingly using non-email applications like VoIP over and even using Wi-Fi for order processing, updated inventory information requirements, remote monitoring using wireless Internet cameras. According to Nagaraj Bhargava, director, Marketing and Strategic Initiatives at SAP India, "The earlier generation of mobile applications focused on a tiny browser, which ignored the performance constraints of the devices and the needs of individual users. The user was always not connected even in the best of mobile networks and real time connectivity was always not needed. What was needed was a reliable network to exchange data! This is what the current generation of wireless devices address." But things are changing. Bhargava says, "Today, there are several applications that have the functionality helping to meet the needs of a user who gets disconnected by completing the process which has already been mobilized, by creating layers of processes. These layers smartly move data back and forth so that information is processed during connectivity. Thus, the user can accomplish his tasks without worrying whether he is connected or disconnected."
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"Today, companies have dispersed workers who have to operate as a single connected team. Employees have to be agile and make on the spot decisions"
-Vijay Shukla, country head, Value First
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"Earlier our offerings were very limited, but now we are ready to provide several mobile applications to enterprises customers"
-Harsh Juneja, GM, Enterprise Business Unit, Tata Teleservices,
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"The earlier generation of mobile applications focused on a tiny browser, which ignored the performance constraints of the devices"
-Nagaraj Bhargava, director, Marketing and Strategic Initiatives, SAP India
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THE DRIVERS
The need of the workforce to remain connected for increased productivity and staying ahead of competition by better decision-making are some of the main drivers for companies going for wireless. In the end, all of these result in improved customer satisfaction. According to Vijay Shukla, country head, Value First, a mobile messaging company, "Today, companies have dispersed workers who have to operate as a single connected team. Employees have to be agile and make on the spot decisions to win new customers and improve customer satisfaction and to increase productivity of employees." He adds, "The true value of mobile and wireless applications lies in helping users in getting information when they need it the most."
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| The true value of mobile and wireless applications lies in helping users in getting information when they need it the most |
REAL CATALYSTS
Apart from the solution vendors, it is the telecom service providers who are acting as the real catalyst by offering mobility solutions in conjunction with application vendors. Things have drastically improved on the connectivity front and have become more reliable. Wireless service providers are offering guaranteed SLAs to enterprises ensuring customers' satisfaction by providing proper connectivity. According to Harsh Juneja, GM, Enterprise Business Unit, Tata Teleservices, "Earlier our offerings were very limited, but now we are ready to provide several mobile applications to the enterprises customers." All the services providers including Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications, Hutchison, Idea Cellular, and Tata Teleservices are offering a range of business calls wireless services. Only exceptions are BSNL and MTNL who have not leveraged on their widespread presence to offer these services to corporate customers.
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