Business Model

The company's adoption of WLANs as a technology was based on the initiative to help increase user productivity, adopt Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), provide an alternative to physical cabling in the factory floors, and as an inventory control mechanism in the warehouse.

The company's use of WLANs had to fulfill two main goals:

• First and foremost was the need to provide adequate documentation supporting the ability to secure the transmission of data in the wireless medium.

• Additionally, with the arrival of Sarbanes-Oxley, it had to be reviewed for compliance.

The compelling story that supported the business case for deploying WLANs was the result of a time (use) study. The goal of the study was to prove a financial benefit to deploying WLANs. Those employees who participated were asked to record their time daily.

This employee test bed consisted of three small groups composed of 15 to 20 individuals. They were grouped into two user categoriesmobile and nonmobilewhich were then further classified into three groups as follows:

• No laptop

• Laptop with no access to WLAN

• Laptop with access to WLAN

Note

Mobile users were defined as individuals who work more than 15 hours a week away from their desk while still in a company facility.

The results of the study from each user group were compared to each other to subjectively support the need for WLANs in specific areas.

Note

Initially, the company did not encourage the use of the WLAN as a primary means of network access because of cultural issues specifically, work patterns and concerns about security.

The time study focused on people productivity; however, the company had an additional hurdle to cross. It was time for them to migrate their manufacturing and factory facilities from the older 900-MHz systems to a more current 2.4-GHz (802.11) infrastructure. This would allow them to take advantage of the emerging technologies and products coming into the market. Especially important was the ability to take full advantage of RFID and cost avoidance and to provide flexibility. This is covered later in this chapter.

The company is conducting a post-WLAN implementation follow-up study using the same individuals to validate the assumptions and provide the needed data that would show a positive ROI.