Will you be ready for the wireless enterprise?
By James R. Borck , InfoWorld Test Center
Building a wireless infrastructure today
requires future-proofing and flexible standards
WITH ALL OF the hype surrounding
the wireless Internet and its promises of anytime, anywhere information availability,
businesses are champing at the bit to begin exploiting the potential of this burgeoning medium.
Extending corporate IT systems to wireless devices -- cellular phones, PDAs, and
handheld computers -- creates a new delivery channel, broadening accessibility to
applications, services, and information. This additional degree of freedom will help
reshape the way business is transacted, both for employees and customers.
Wireless infrastructures will arm sales forces with instant access to CRM (customer
relationship management) capabilities from the field. Wireless extranets will offer
value-added service channels to partners. And wireless access to email, instant messaging,
portals, and ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems will bestow time-saving efficiency
to anyone not chained to a desk from 8 to 5. See our related illustration, "Unplugging
the enterprise infrastructure."
Alas, this is still the future. Because of developing standards, limited devices,
and immature tools, the benefits of implementing wireless at this stage will be hard
won. In general, unless you are currently working with partners or a vendor product
that is already WAP (Wireless Application Protocol)-enabled, your company would be
best advised to stay out of the wireless market at least until after the first half of 2001.
Moving to a wireless, information-on-demand model will take some planning and an
investment in standards that are still being proven. If you are intent on entering
this new marketplace, take every precaution to remain flexible.
Suit up or sit out?
At first glance, creating a wireless infrastructure appears to be a straightforward
process, and it is. But the devil is in the details.
Complicating the transition to wireless is the large variety of client devices
with limited display capabilities, processing power, memory capacity, and input
capabilities. Also, today's second generation network technologies are short on
bandwidth and QoS (quality of service) assurances. In effect, the new wireless
world is something of a throwback to the Internet of the late 1980s.
Questions are also surrounding WAP, the key open standard being used to bridge
the disparate worlds of wireless and the Internet. WAP has taken some shots for
lacking proficiency at delivering higher throughput content and for inadequate security,
although the latter shortcoming has recently been amended in the WAP specification.
Competing standards such as iMode from NTT Mobile Communications Network (DoCoMo)
have become very popular in Japan due to their relative ease of use, and new XML
standards such as Multi-channel Application XML from Curious Networks promise
superior service over 3G (third generation) wireless connections.
The reality of WAP, however, is that it has been making great strides and
gaining acceptance both stateside and in Europe. The next revision, Version 2.0,
due for approval by mid-2001, is slated to include specifications for migrating
the technology base to XHTML (Extensible HTML) and TCP in order to further
simplify application delivery. Provisions are also included for streaming
media, animation, and color graphics, which will all stand a more realistic
chance of being delivered adequately as 3G wireless becomes pervasive,
increasing the throughput rate from 9.6KBps to 14.4KBps.
Although there is some skepticism currently about WAP, its ability to
interface wireless and wireline networks make it seem well-entrenched for the future.
First deployment
So far, the consumer has been driving the surge in the wireless market;
however, it may be to your advantage to focus on satisfying in-house needs
first. The cost of dumbing down your Web site to co-deliver WAP gateway information,
as well as needing to test across a wide variety of devices, makes rolling out new
applications a nightmare. Even attempts at consumer wireless are somewhat cost prohibitive.
For in-house and business-to-business use, WAP is finding its home on
procurement shop floors and in SFA (sales-force automation). For internal
needs, companies can afford to be less focused on fly-by-night standards
and can more easily agree upon a defined delivery architecture.
Creating a mobile technical architecture that can seamlessly deliver
end-to-end services into back-end business logic will require several key
components: tools for transcoding your data into a standard XML framework,
a WAP gateway, security and personalization capabilities, and a wireless
application development kit. In each case, the solution you choose should
be flexible enough to adapt to an uncertain future.
A variety of transcoding applications are on the market; ScoutWare from
Aether Software and WebSphere Transcoding Publisher from IBM, for instance,
but most are still immature and their scalability is questionable.
Enabling the separation of data from format structure will be imperative
for reducing the complexities of the project.
You must then select a WAP gateway. The WAP gateway acts as a data
and protocol converter between the wireless and wireline networks.
We've highlighted several such gateways and their benefits in the box below.
The cost of launching a private WAP gateway can span a cost from
tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on
the gateway's complexity and features. Naturally, more capable solutions,
such as Motorola's MIX gateway, which integrates voice and data access
(http://www.mot.com/), and specialized solutions, such as the Nokia
Everyplace solution for Lotus Domino, can escalate costs. In order to
avoid the hefty startup costs involved in building your own, your
company might tap the services of a wireless service provider or settle
for your carrier's gateway.
Integrated security
Improvements in the WAP specification will provide better end-to-end
encryption capability, from the handset to the server. WAP's WTLS
(Wireless Transport Layer Security) is modeled on TLS, a revision of
popular SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encryption. Previously, during the
decryption and re-encryption process of transporting data through the
gateway, information was left momentarily exposed in memory. Although
the risk was minimal, it nonetheless presented the potential for a security breach.
For companies building financial or e-commerce applications, the
need for complete privacy is paramount. PKI (public key infrastructure)
companies such as Baltimore and RSA are also securing wireless communications
through their Telepathy and Bsafe products, respectively.
Access control is another area of concern. The best theft deterrents
won't work if you leave your keys in the ignition. Companies should create
a security policy that requires employees to account for the whereabouts
of their wireless devices on a frequent basis, and they should establish
procedures for swiftly deactivating any device reported missing.
Security and device identification create a great opportunity for
personalizing the delivery of applications and content. Personalization
provides an essential advantage for circumventing the awkward data entry
screens of wireless devices. A properly deployed identification scheme
will enable delivery of targeted, user-specific data, even presented
through a portal interface that will help reduce the number of
transmissions required to reach a necessary application.
Development plans
Although many vendors charge a licensing fee for use of their WML
(Wireless Markup Language)-enabled browser software, most offer their
software development kits free of charge. Most good SDKs are currently
shipping with features such as a PC-based development environment
to create, test, and debug applications, as well as device simulators
that can be used to demonstrate and test applications on specific
hardware.
In such a rapidly developing area of technology, making credible
predictions remains a thorny challenge. Nevertheless, promising
technologies such as VXML (voice-based XML) and GPS (global positioning system)
integration certainly hold potential for the future. And Java-enabled handsets
made a big showing at Comdex this fall. DoCoMo is expecting to roll out Java
support in the next few months, but it likely won't become prevalent in
the United States until much later in the year. Nevertheless, developers
would do well to start planning for this eventuality.
In general, moving to wireless will require your IT staff to learn only
a handful of new skills and APIs. The challenges are not insurmountable. The
trick will be to future-proof your investment and prepare for the inevitable
transition to 3G.
A good starting place to learn more about WAP and wireless is the WAP
Forum (http://www.wapforum.org/). The organization helps develop standards
for wireless communication and also provides up-to-date information, access
to WAP technical specifications, and a good calendar of events relevant to
the wireless world.
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