Copyright 2004 Quocirca Ltd
Quocirca Insight Report
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Enterprise Wireless Update
Scaling it up
MAIN POINTS
Significant experience of wireless exists but deployments are still largely limited
Indications are that over half of European corporates now have experience of cellular wireless data
but that relatively few projects are moving from the stage of pilot or limited rollout to large scale
deployment.
Four key challenges have constrained progress
There is no one single factor that has held up progress. A combination of issues have stood in the
way of companies moving forward more aggressively:
1. Most mainstream activity to date (70%) has been concerned with mobile office,
particularly mobile email. Justifying pilots in this area has been relatively easy based on
“gut feel”, but the business case for large scale deployment is much more difficult to make
as many of the benefits are “soft” in nature.
2.
The rapidly evolving technology landscape has led to decision making uncertainty and
reluctance to commit. Early adopters highlight a need to consider three key wireless
network technologies (GPRS, WiFi and 3G) along with at least four different device
classes and a plethora of device operating systems.
3.
The perceived operational difficulties remain a concern. Almost three quarters of
adopters (71%) regard security as a key area still to be dealt with and about half highlight
the challenge of device management. Such issues have often not been fully addressed in
the pilot stage.
4.
IT departments are busy enough already. Project backlogs in other areas have
accumulated over the past two years as a result of the economic downturn. Allocating
resource to manage and implement large scale production rollouts of wireless against the
backdrop of the other three challenges has therefore been difficult to justify.
But business cases are becoming easier to make
Techniques that allow the building of business cases based on soft as well as hard financial benefi