The continuing convergence of wireless and desktop communications for both information and personal access is starting to cause great consternation among enterprise IT management; they don't know what their responsibilities will be, nor how to fulfill those responsibilities.

Fortunately, there were some very vocal discussions between enterprise technology managers and enterprise technology providers at last week's "Planet PDA" conference in Las Vegas. Considering that conference travel has been so difficult after the events of September 11th, the content, quality and timeliness of this event was a refreshing boost for the converged communication industry; it made for overflow audiences for several of the program sessions.

Personal Wireless Communication Moving Fast

Market studies indicate that, just as with the start of PC usage in the enterprise, most end users now purchase their own wireless PDAs and cell phones and services, primarily for personal email and voice communication. Unlike PCs and station set telephones, PDAs and mobile phones are not a fixed part of the office desktop real estate, and, unlike laptops, are more portable and more personalized.

With prices dropping for wireless handheld PDA/phones, exploitation of wireless IP network access through carrier services, and enterprise Wi-Fi (802.1X wireless Ethernet) technology replacing wired LAN and remote VPN access, these handheld devices are candidates for cost effectively replacing and/or supplementing laptops and wired desktop personal communications and information access.

Wireless information delivery, or what we have been calling "application messaging," is also part of the unified communication landscape of wireless handheld communication. However, most of the technology providers attending the Vegas conference are still thinking primarily along the lines of "thick" clients that support enterprise applications just like the desktop and the laptop.

Since PDAs can now support gigabytes of disk storage and lots of flash memory, there seems to be a tendency to overload the limited input and output interface capabilities of the handheld device as if they are laptops or desktops. This was particularly reflected in the presentations from the providers using the Palm, Pocket PC and IPAQ PDA platforms.

On the other hand, with the exception of some key participants like Avaya, Siemens, Captaris and Handspring, there was a noticeable lack of conference participation from the mobile phone industry to represent mobile user needs for converged mobile unified (voice, text, fax) message and personal call management -- better known as unified communication (UC).

There were ample market studies and anecdotal evidence presented at the conference that supported the potential for wireless "always on" PDAs and mobile phones to be essential extensions for every enterprise end user's desktop or laptop.

• The Yankee Group reported that there are now over 45 million "road warriors" in the U.S. However, this does not take into account the "new mobility" defined by wireless network service provider Motient that includes anyone who is away from his or her desktop.

• An Ipsos-Reid email study of over 2,000 business users was cited that showed that they averaged 100 messages sent and received per business day, and approximately one-third of all messages sent or received were viewed as time-sensitive by the recipients and the senders.

  That's an increase from an older Gartner Group study that showed only 27% of messages were time-critical. With wireless delivery, time delays of between 30 minutes and one hour in waiting for messages were eliminated for almost half of the respondents.

• According to an IDC survey, 29% of respondents said that the Internet did not meet their expectations, while less than 2% of respondents said that wireless access did not live up to their expectations.

• One speaker who attended the recent Comdex show reported that while attendance was down by about 50%, the biggest traffic was noticeable at booths that were exhibiting wireless PDAs.

• Another market study mentioned by a keynote speaker reported that 51% of users who don't have a PDA yet will buy one this year, while 54% of users who have already had a PDA for three years, will buy a new one this year.

• Almost all purchases are made by individual "consumers" and not by enterprise organizations.

What Are IT Managers Doing?

According to many of the speakers at the conference, most IT managers are still just avoiding the problem of end-user Wireless Communication; they're doing so for a number of practical reasons, including concerns over:

• Lack of standards for enterprise application information access and delivery;

• Supporting wireless, cross-media access for enterprise applications;

• Lack of management controls by IT over information flow, devices and usage;

• Concerns for enterprise information access security and stored information security if the wireless PDA is lost or stolen;

• Battery life and synchronization problems when batteries are dead;

• "Always on" broadband wireless coverage;

• ROI and TCO for supporting multi-purpose, multi-modal handheld wireless devices;

• The proliferation of different wireless device configurations and confusion over which ones should be used and supported by the enterprise.

The biggest IT management challenge, however, is how to extend the immense enterprise investments in existing application software to the diverse user interfaces of wireless devices.

Expanding Our Definition of Mobility and Accessibility

Before discussing the issues surrounding the support of "mobile" users, we have to rethink our traditional view of enterprise user mobility, both for information access/delivery or person-to-person communication, which have been primarily focused on off-premise situations -- most notably "Road Warriors", i.e. traveling salespeople, field-service staff and even travelling executives who spend significant amounts of time away from their offices but must still be in touch with people and information.

Now there is recognition of the mobility needs of the "Corridor Cruiser" or anyone who is simply away from their desktop PC and telephone, even for a few minutes, and is therefore not communication accessible, nor can they immediately access up-to-date information that may be needed during any kind of real-time conversation with other people. Multi-modal mobile phones and wireless "always on" PDAs, either as converged "PDA-phones" or separate devices, are now enabling any enterprise user to be communication-accessible and responsive to people contacts, as well as being able to retrieve or enter information when time is of the essence.

While individual communication accessibility is typically based on location, i.e., at the desktop, near a phone, etc., wireless access has shifted the focus to personal availability to communicate. A particularly common form of communication unavailability in a business (or social) environment occurs during face-to-face meetings, where it is inappropriate to disturb the proceedings with phone calls or voice messages. Silent, wireless text message exchange (including Instant Messaging) has therefore become an increasingly useful mode of information delivery and personal communication.

The continuing convergence of wireless and desktop communications for both information and personal access is starting to cause great consternation among enterprise IT management; they don't know what their responsibilities will be, nor how to fulfill those responsibilities.

Fortunately, there were some very vocal discussions between enterprise technology managers and enterprise technology providers at last week's "Planet PDA" conference in Las Vegas. Considering that conference travel has been so difficult after the events of September 11th, the content, quality and timeliness of this event was a refreshing boost for the converged communication industry; it made for overflow audiences for several of the program sessions.

Personal Wireless Communication Moving Fast

Market studies indicate that, just as with the start of PC usage in the enterprise, most end users now purchase their own wireless PDAs and cell phones and services, primarily for personal email and voice communication. Unlike PCs and station set telephones, PDAs and mobile phones are not a fixed part of the office desktop real estate, and, unlike laptops, are more portable and more personalized.

With prices dropping for wireless handheld PDA/phones, exploitation of wireless IP network access through carrier services, and enterprise Wi-Fi (802.1X wireless Ethernet) technology replacing wired LAN and remote VPN access, these handheld devices are candidates for cost effectively replacing and/or supplementing laptops and wired desktop personal communications and information access.

Wireless information delivery, or what we have been calling "application messaging," is also part of the unified communication landscape of wireless handheld communication. However, most of the technology providers attending the Vegas conference are still thinking primarily along the lines of "thick" clients that support enterprise applications just like the desktop and the laptop.

Since PDAs can now support gigabytes of disk storage and lots of flash memory, there seems to be a tendency to overload the limited input and output interface capabilities of the handheld device as if they are laptops or desktops. This was particularly reflected in the presentations from the providers using the Palm, Pocket PC and IPAQ PDA platforms.

On the other hand, with the exception of some key participants like Avaya, Siemens, Captaris and Handspring, there was a noticeable lack of conference participation from the mobile phone industry to represent mobile user needs for converged mobile unified (voice, text, fax) message and personal call management -- better known as unified communication (UC).

There were ample market studies and anecdotal evidence presented at the conference that supported the potential for wireless "always on" PDAs and mobile phones to be essential extensions for every enterprise end user's desktop or laptop.

• The Yankee Group reported that there are now over 45 million "road warriors" in the U.S. However, this does not take into account the "new mobility" defined by wireless network service provider Motient that includes anyone who is away from his or her desktop.

• An Ipsos-Reid email study of over 2,000 business users was cited that showed that they averaged 100 messages sent and received per business day, and approximately one-third of all messages sent or received were viewed as time-sensitive by the recipients and the senders.

  That's an increase from an older Gartner Group study that showed only 27% of messages were time-critical. With wireless delivery, time delays of between 30 minutes and one hour in waiting for messages were eliminated for almost half of the respondents.

• According to an IDC survey, 29% of respondents said that the Internet did not meet their expectations, while less than 2% of respondents said that wireless access did not live up to their expectations.

• One speaker who attended the recent Comdex show reported that while attendance was down by about 50%, the biggest traffic was noticeable at booths that were exhibiting wireless PDAs.

• Another market study mentioned by a keynote speaker reported that 51% of users who don't have a PDA yet will buy one this year, while 54% of users who have already had a PDA for three years, will buy a new one this year.

• Almost all purchases are made by individual "consumers" and not by enterprise organizations.

What Are IT Managers Doing?

According to many of the speakers at the conference, most IT managers are still just avoiding the problem of end-user Wireless Communication; they're doing so for a number of practical reasons, including concerns over:

• Lack of standards for enterprise application information access and delivery;

• Supporting wireless, cross-media access for enterprise applications;

• Lack of management controls by IT over information flow, devices and usage;

• Concerns for enterprise information access security and stored information security if the wireless PDA is lost or stolen;

• Battery life and synchronization problems when batteries are dead;

• "Always on" broadband wireless coverage;

• ROI and TCO for supporting multi-purpose, multi-modal handheld wireless devices;

• The proliferation of different wireless device configurations and confusion over which ones should be used and supported by the enterprise.

The biggest IT management challenge, however, is how to extend the immense enterprise investments in existing application software to the diverse user interfaces of wireless devices.

Expanding Our Definition of Mobility and Accessibility

Before discussing the issues surrounding the support of "mobile" users, we have to rethink our traditional view of enterprise user mobility, both for information access/delivery or person-to-person communication, which have been primarily focused on off-premise situations -- most notably "Road Warriors", i.e. traveling salespeople, field-service staff and even travelling executives who spend significant amounts of time away from their offices but must still be in touch with people and information.

Now there is recognition of the mobility needs of the "Corridor Cruiser" or anyone who is simply away from their desktop PC and telephone, even for a few minutes, and is therefore not communication accessible, nor can they immediately access up-to-date information that may be needed during any kind of real-time conversation with other people. Multi-modal mobile phones and wireless "always on" PDAs, either as converged "PDA-phones" or separate devices, are now enabling any enterprise user to be communication-accessible and responsive to people contacts, as well as being able to retrieve or enter information when time is of the essence.

While individual communication accessibility is typically based on location, i.e., at the desktop, near a phone, etc., wireless access has shifted the focus to personal availability to communicate. A particularly common form of communication unavailability in a business (or social) environment occurs during face-to-face meetings, where it is inappropriate to disturb the proceedings with phone calls or voice messages. Silent, wireless text message exchange (including Instant Messaging) has therefore become an increasingly useful mode of information delivery and personal communication.