The Business Community Benefits

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Today's business community is demanding more rapid, flexible and cost efficient ways of accessing information and network infrastructure. Wireless LANs meet those demands. Wi-Fi solutions enable the business community to realize flexibility and real-time access to information for any employee who needs to be constantly connected. The ease and speed of connecting and disconnecting wireless devices gives organizations a reliable, scalable and easy-to-integrate tool that can increase productivity and save money.

In today's ever-changing workplace, a wireless LAN combines the power of freedom and the ability for employees to access corporate digital resources (calendars, schedules, literature, documents, and other critical operating data) and the Internet and their email-wherever and whenever they need it.

In many organizations, employees spend, on average, close to 50 percent of their time away from their desk. For those entities, the mobility of wireless is a necessity-rather than simply a "nice-to-have."

Industry studies have sliced and diced all the small ways Wi-Fi is helping to save time and to gain efficiencies. For instance, the ability to go through email while waiting for an appointment, checking a database for real-time data during a meeting with a client, or present networked data to colleagues during a conference.

  • Sage Research found that on average, a WLAN user could save up to 8 hours per week.

  • Microsoft has presented subjective user data, which indicates that users saved 0.5 to 1.5 hours per day, or an average of 4 hours per week.

  • The Gartner Group found that professional wireless users reported increased productivity of up to 25 hours per week.

If an organization is already supporting a variety of mobile devices, it can offer users higher-performing connectivity and access at lower cost through wireless networking. (See Fig. 2.3.)

click to expand
Figure 2.2: Per industry study conducted by NOP World Technology on behalf of Cisco, Inc. Graphic courtesy of NOP World Technology.

Mobile Device

Monthly Charges Per User

Cell Phone

$100

Wireless Handheld E-mail Device

$85

Telephone

$70

Wireless

$48 ($28 support, $20 infrastructure)

Notebook vs. PC

$38

Audio Bridging

$20

Prepared by Intel Corporation (2002)


Figure 2.3: It costs less to support a productive worker on a WLAN than on other popular mobile devices.

Even after all that has been said and written about it, some readers will still question whether Wi-Fi is really "ready for prime time," since it is so different from conventional network technology. Well, consider this: cell phones of years gone by were bulky, their reception was poor and their service areas were limited-but they still were a "must have" device. Wi-Fi stands in an analogous position today: it's becoming increasingly popular in many workplaces because it unchains people from their desks (sound familiar?). With Wi-Fi, users can take their laptop/PDA/tablet to the cafeteria, a cafe, the park, or even start their evening commute, and still be in touch. For Internet junkies and workaholics, Wi-Fi is a dream come true. According to Business Week, employees with access to Wi-Fi stay online an average of 105 minutes more each day and one company told the publication that it had seen a 20 percent productivity gain due to installation of Wi-Fi technology within its networks.

One way companies can squeeze even more minutes of productivity from their employees is by keeping them busy while they are traveling. Some 600 U.S. hotels offer wireless networks today, a number that the research firm, Gartner Inc., expects will grow to 5800 by the year 2005.

Similar productivity gains are what spearheaded the universal business adoption of cellular phones. But, unlike cell phones, productivity is just one benefit of Wi-Fi.

For system administrators, Wi-Fi technology improves operational flexibility: WLANs do not require extensive cabling and patching or much network management. Wi-Fi even saves technical support time because (1) it's a simple technology, (2) you can pre-configure clients, and (3) it can be used as backup media in case of failure of a wired component. Another feature that many find appealing is that printers can be hooked up wirelessly to the network and placed on carts so they can be wheeled to different locations.

Finally, for business owners and managers, extending the network to temporary contractors and guests is easy. Increasingly, mobile users bring their own Wi-Fi-enabled computers with them, so they can easily access their email and the Internet from a suitably-equipped location via a Wi-Fi network.

Small Businesses: For the manager of a small business or office, wireless means you might not need a full-time IT person, or additional cables, or any need to expand the router. Wi-Fi is easy to administer, and to add or move a workstation all that's needed is to power up the computer, and the employee is back on the network.

Seasonal Businesses: For owners of a seasonal business, Wi-Fi provides a network that offers quick and easy set up, whenever and wherever it's needed. Moves to a different or larger location are fast and simple-just unplug the network and computers and plug them in at the new location. For example, with the help of Wi-Fi solutions, it's possible to temporarily set up a store on a barge or a retired cruise ship in order to serve a seasonal tourist crowd.

Service Businesses: For business owners who depend on customers walking through their doors (rather than a competitor's door) and whose business model dictates that the customer stays on the premises for a while (e.g. coffee shops, auto repair shops, hotels), making their property Wi-Fi friendly might be an astute business move. As more and more devices ship with built-in Wi-Fi capability, providing wireless Internet access has the potential to attract customers, which can ultimately result in higher sales and increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Hotels find that having a wireless network in-house is attractive to business travelers, while commercial property owners find Wi-Fi an excellent sales tool, and airports are discovering that Wi-Fi has become a necessity for air travelers. There are many people who want to be work-enabled no matter where they are and connecting via Wi-Fi is fast becoming the method of choice for Net nomads everywhere.

Wi-Fi access providers are teaming up with service business owners. To give the reader an idea of the growth in this value-add area, consider this: the Gartner Group expects close to 116,000 "coffee-shop" networks by the end of 2004, many more than the less than a 1200 or so that existed at the beginning of 2002. Once a Wi-Fi network (e.g. HotSpot) has been installed, a cafe owner might find that the service attracts telecommuters, who stay longer reading their email (and perhaps even surfing the Web, if alone) while dining. Customers who once spent $5 for a quick lunch are now spending more, e.g. perhaps ordering dessert while answering an email, or ordering an after dinner drink to relax as they check out the latest movie trailers.

So, if your business has the potential to boost its revenues by enticing customers to stay around a bit longer, a Wi-Fi installation may be in your future.

Libraries: Patrons could bring their own laptops into the library to do their research. Library staff could take advantage of the mobility granted by a wireless network with projects such as inventory control, or remote circulation. Bibliographic instruction could "go mobile"-classes could be taught in any area within the range of an AP.

Educational Institutions: Increasingly students bring their own computers to school-laptops, PDAs, and even the tablet PC are classroom bound. They want to be able to use them on campus, anytime, anywhere. But, providing sufficient network points in places where they want to use them-libraries, study areas, classrooms and cafés-can be expensive and inflexible if a traditional wired LAN set-up is used. However, with a wireless LAN on campus, the user can go anywhere and stay connected, including places that might not have been wired such as corridors, cafés and even outside. Many educational institutions that use WLANs have included coverage in cafe and (in locales with reasonable climates) outdoors. Experience shows that this is very popular with students and they do make effective use of such spaces for online learning.

It's also worth noting that when students have wireless LAN cards in their mobile computing device, they can share data between the their computers even in the absence of a network by using "peer-to-peer" networking (the "ad hoc" mode), i.e. the computers talks directly with each other without servers and routers, similar to the model that made "Napster" a household word.

Healthcare: Organizations in the healthcare field, in particular, have found that a Wi-Fi network improves the collection and maintenance of accurate and up-to-date data. Instant access to real time records and resources can impact the way in which a physician delivers treatment to a patient and can make a difference in a patient's health outcome.

Wireless networking offers healthcare organizations the ability to achieve significantly greater accuracy in everyday tasks and can help to eliminate the paper overload. The anytime, anywhere aspect of wireless communications allows increased access to accurate information when it is needed most. In the healthcare industry this could mean the difference between life and death.

Companies with Field Staff: Sales personnel can make rapid (and better) decisions where it counts-in the customer's office. They can access information (custom pricing information, for example) and expert help (e.g. will a specific product be suitable for a specific environment) from the home office, outside vendors, and beyond. Response times to customer inquires can be cut dramatically, improving overall sales. If the field staff includes repair crews, Wi-Fi can allow them not only to stay in touch with the dispatcher, home office and sales staff (repair crews probably see more customers than even the average salesperson), but also to access necessary schematics and other information, therefore "upping the odds" that the repair will be completed in one service call. Repair crews also could fix some equipment before it malfunctions-the equipment itself calls in the repair. Billing too could be initiated directly from the customer's location.

Warehouses and Distribution Centers: Wi-Fi has been used in these locations extensively since the latter-half of the 1990s. Managers quickly saw the benefit of connected mobility. With a Wi-Fi system in place, goods received can be tracked from the moment they enter until they are shipped out-receiving, put-away, inventory, and quality control. Wireless networks enable employees to quickly and easily check product costs and availability, as well as to log products via their laptops or a handheld computer without having to walk back and forth to a central PC. A typical Wi-Fi network might consist of a combination of forklift-mounted data terminals and handheld data terminals with integrated barcode scanners. This allows for communication between the terminals and the host computer, which enables scenarios such as forklift operators at various locations being dynamically directed to complete specific tasks. There is much that can be accomplished with a Wi-Fi-enabled operation: greater productivity, better inventory control, fewer errors in orders and shipments, overall savings in operational costs, and more.

Manufacturers: Wi-Fi has already become a necessity in the manufacturing industry. In many cases, factories are just too large to be served by conventional wiring. Also, wired systems are vulnerable. As an example, Boeing opted for Wi-Fi after it found that errant trucks and forklifts crushed cables, disrupted communications. Wi-Fi can improve productivity, enabling such things as access to corporate records from any location or viewing electronic blueprints in situ.

Disaster Management: A disaster could potentially paralyze a business. The key requirements for a disaster recovery communications network are mobility, reliability, security, and ease-of-use for both the IT staff and the end-users. During a disaster-related crisis, the staff will mostly likely be mobile-dealing with matters outside their normal job description in order to get things back to some semblance of normalcy. In such situations, Wi-Fi is the optimal choice. Wi-Fi-enabled devices such as, laptops, handhelds, and PDAs (along with interactive pagers and cell phones) can be the lifeline needed for governmental agencies, disaster relief organizations, and businesses to stay afloat during a crisis.

When an organization is suddenly forced to temporarily relocate because of a disaster, it usually doesn't know ahead of time what the new office space will look like-it might be a school gym, a church, an empty warehouse or even a barge floating on a river. But the organization in question probably won't be able to alter the temporary space, nor in all likelihood even want to incur the expense of doing so. During such crises there generally isn't time to pull a lot of telephone and LAN cables to bring about even the vague appearance of a traditional corporate IT communications infrastructure. Thus, an organization's communications network needs to be easy to set up and capable of working in a wide variety of building spaces. Just what Wi-Fi does best.

Temporary Locations: Wireless LANs are great for businesses that regulary occupy temporary lease space; for training sites that constantly require remodeling to suit specific training situations; and for temporary registration booths at conventions, trade shows and other like events.

Wi-Fi installations are gaining traction in the business arena and the number of wire-lessly enabled devices continues to grow and near-term investment in basic vertical-specific solutions (e.g. patient care in the healthcare industry and warehouse management in distribution) provides a solid foundation for future growth. As the number of productivity-enhancing applications increase, the business community will continue to invest more time and money in Wi-Fi solutions, bringing them one step closer to the truly wireless enterprise.



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Going Wi-Fi. A Practical Guide to Planning and Building an 802.11 Network
Going Wi-Fi: A Practical Guide to Planning and Building an 802.11 Network
ISBN: 1578203015
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 273

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