Just Enough Wireless Computing

• Authors: Ian S. Hayes
• Venue: Just Enough Wireless Computing
• Year: 2002

From the Book:PrefaceOver the course of the past forty-plus years, we have seen computers shrink from the size of a room to the size of a wallet, and telephones move from walls and desks into our pockets. We have witnessed the rise and growing strength of a worldwide network for information interchange. And now we are seeing the convergence of these trends, forging a powerful platform from which we can reshape the way we do business and live our lives. This platform is wireless technology. The possibilities created by its arrival are the topic of this book.Wireless technology first entered my life through a mobile phone, the same way it has probably entered the lives of millions of others. As a management consultant and frequent traveler, the advantages of being able to communicate easily and conveniently in almost any location are powerful and instantly addictive. No more telephone booths in airports. A means of notifying clients when hopelessly stuck in a traffic jam. Combine that telephone with my PDA, add the ability to surf the Internet and send and receive e-mails and we are starting to reach consultant nirvana! But as powerful as these benefits are, they barely scratch the surface of what is possible from wireless technology.Much of my work revolves around making companies more effective, finding ways to better serve customers, enhance efficiency, and increase revenues. Process improvements are inevitably the basis for these benefits. The real power of wireless technology is its ability to support substantive process improvements. This power becomes clear when delving into the groundbreaking applications created by the wireless pioneers. Firms like Penske Logistics,Honeywell, and UPS are using wireless technology in innovative ways to streamline operations and offer new services. The more I studied these firms, the more excited I got about the potential of the technology. Clearly, wireless technology could benefit almost any company in almost any industry. Yet surprisingly, companies are adopting wireless technology at a much slower than expected rate. Why?The world of wireless is just too confusing. Walk into any bookstore. Pick up any trade publication. Listen to any solution provider pitch. It is a mind-boggling landscape of hype, acronyms, and endless technical details. And nothing is standing still. Networks, devices, and applications are evolving at a dizzying clip. Vendors seem to appear and disappear every few minutes. Standards are in flux and there are no runaway market leaders. Is wireless technology really ready for prime time? Who has time to make sense of this market? No wonder so many managers and executives remain on the sidelines. But the benefits of wireless technology are real. The companies that overcome its challenges are reaping these benefits and gaining a substantial competitive advantage.My goal in writing this book is to help your company capture this advantage by providing a simple framework for navigating the wireless maze. From examples of real-life wireless solutions in use, to technology overviews and a step-by-step approach for devising your own solutions, this book will give you a foundation for launching a wireless initiative within your company. In today's busy world, few managers and executives have the time for in-depth research, yet they still need to make knowledgeable strategic decisions on the use of technology within their companies. In keeping with its title, this book seeks to educate you and give you just enough essential information to begin exploring mobile and wireless computing with intelligence and confidence. I hope it meets your expectations. Audience for This Book This book was written for anyone interested in understanding how and where to apply wireless technology within their company or organization. To serve the widest audience, the book minimizes the use of technical jargon and focuses on how to use wireless technology to gain real business benefit. As such, the book's contents should be especially useful to executives and managers who need a quick education on the practical aspects of wireless technology.The book contains three sections to meet the varying needs of its audience. The first section focuses on the benefits and uses of wireless technology and contains extensive examples describing how companies are currently deploying wireless solutions. The second section offers a framework, complete with a questionnaire and checklists, to guide readers through the process of selecting and assembling a wireless solution. The third section provides technical overviews on various aspects of wireless technology including management issues, solution considerations, devices, networks, applications, and support requirements.The book should appeal to the following categories of readers. Business Executives and Managers Executives and line managers will find the first section useful for learning about the potential of wireless technology and gaining specific ideas for solutions within their areas. Skimming the second section should offe an understanding of the scope and effort of launching a wireless initiative. IT Professionals IT professionals, such as CIOs, CTOs, project managers, information analysts, and software engineers, will find all three sections of the book useful. The third section should provide a foundation for further technical research and the second section, along with the questionnaire, checklists, and solution provider list in the appendices, will be especially useful for IT professionals charged with project implementation. IT Solution Providers Wireless software, hardware, and service providers will find the examples in the first section of the book useful as proof of the viability of wireless technology. The second section, and particularly the chapter on solution justification, will be valuable for assisting their customers in launching wireless initiatives. Analysts and Media The "just enough" concept employed by this book will help industry analysts, investment analysts, trade press editors, and writers gain quick insight into a variety of wireless topics. The book organizes many complex and seemingly unrelated components into a simple framework. Summary of Contents This book is organized into three topical sections to help readers focus on their areas of greatest interest.The first section includes Chapters 2 and 3 and provides an overview of wireless technology and its benefits as well as extensive examples and case studies showing how companies are currently deploying wireless solutions. Readers new to wireless technology should begin with Chapter 2. More experienced readers may wish to move directly to the exam applications in Chapter 3. The example solutions are a valuable source of application ideas, and the in-depth case studies describe how three companies implemented their chosen solutions.The second section includes Chapters 4 through 7 and offers a framework, complete with a questionnaire and checklists, to guide readers through the process of selecting and assembling a wireless solution. This framework covers capturing business requirements (Chapter 4), solution definition (Chapter 5), solution justification (Chapter 6), and solution implementation (Chapter 7).The third section provides more detailed information on various aspects of wireless technology. This section serves as a reference on specific topics and as a resource for supporting the wireless decision framework described in the second section. Its chapters cover management issues (Chapter 8), solution considerations (Chapter 9), devices (Chapter 10), networks (Chapter 11), applications (Chapter 12), and support (Chapter 13). Readers can use a chapter as a whole to gain a high-level view of a particular topic, or use the information from their "cheat sheets" to narrow their research to the subset of options that support their desired solution.The book contains thirteen chapters and three appendices. These chapters cover the gamut of topics needed to research and deploy a wireless solution.Chapter 1, "Introduction," introduces wireless technology and describes how to use this book. Its goal is to demystify a broad, highly complex and rapidly changing technology by avoiding unnecessary jargon and categorizing concepts in a way that enables readers to focus on areas relevant to their immediate needs. This approach provides novice readers with a starting point for exploring wireless technology while offering a more knowledgeable reader a means of quickly finding the topics and information of greatest interest.Chapter 2, "How Wireless Can Help," explores how wireless technology can help readers achieve their business goals. It examines opportunities enabled by the technology and the types of benefits that can be obtained. It discusses how wireless technology provides these benefits and describes situations most amenable to wireless solutions. It shows how a process-based approach to applying wireless technology offers the greatest business benefits and simplifies technology selection.Chapter 3, "How Others Are Using Wireless," uses examples and case studies to explore how companies are already using wireless applications. It has three goals: demonstrate that wireless technology is real and usable, illustrate the range of possible wireless applications, and offer templates for readers contemplating similar applications. Applications are organized by business objectives rather than technical design, thus enabling readers to hone in on the types of applications that most directly apply to their needs.Chapter 4, "Recognizing an Opportunity," helps readers determine if a wireless solution is appropriate for their business objectives and, if so, translate those business objectives into a set of requirements for a wireless application. It advocates a simple top-down approach for identifying and capturing the business requirements for wireless solutions. It describes how to recognize business opportunities where wireless technology may be useful. It explains the process for moving from a business objective to an implementation strategy and introduces the "Five W's" approach to capture functional requirements in a form amenable to wireless solution design.Chapter 5, "Defining a Solution," describes the process for turning business requirements into solution requirements. It uses the answers to the Why, Who, What, When, and Where questions from Chapter 4 to provide a framework for winnowing your wireless decisions into a manageable number. It explains how to develop specific requirements for devices, applications, data, and wireless networks. Comparing these requirements against the tables and other component-specific information in the second half of this book will enable readers to identify the wireless options that best apply to their needs.Chapter 6, "Justifying the Solution," guides the reader through the process of estimating the cost of a wireless solution, and determining and quantifying potential benefits. It offers a four-step process that quantifies benefits, computes the short and long-term expenses, produces a ROI and cash flow analysis, and builds support for the proposed solution by demonstrating that its benefits are achievable.Chapter 7, "Implementing the Solution," covers how to plan the implementation, manage the project, and redesign the underlying business processes. It offers implementation and deployment tips and techniques and describes how to get assistance from the right wireless service provider. Its goal is to provide readers with "just enough" information to understand relevant implementation issues and avoid major pitfalls.Chapter 8, "Management Considerations," presents the topmost management issues that the reader must be prepared to deal with when pursuing a wireless project. It discusses business and legal issues affecting wireless solutions, from policies and standards to liability concerns, and approaches to take to deal with those issues. The goal of this chapter is to forewarn and forearm readers as they undertake a wireless implementation, so they can take steps to avoid potential future problems.Chapter 9, "Solution Considerations," introduces the foremost issues affecting the design and implementation of a wireless solution. From development cycles to extensibility concerns to security issues, this chapter examines the top issues that readers must face as they begin to develop wireless solutions. The goal of the chapter is to review several major challenges in designing and developing a wireless solution, and present the reader with options for dealing with those issues.Chapter 10, "Wireless Devices," provides an overview of the types of devices used in wireless solutions. It also discusses issues commonly encountered in using these devices, and considerations for determining which particular devices to use in a given solution. The goal of the chapter is to help readers choose the right device for their wireless solution by presenting them with a menu of options, cautioning them about strengths and constraints, and advising them of important factors affecting their ultimate selection of device.Chapter 11, "Wireless Networks," summarizes the types of networks that may be involved in a wireless solution, presents issues associated with using each network type, and discusses considerations that help to determine the right network choice for a particular wireless solution. The goal of the chapter is to help readers understand their network options, and narrow their choices to those that best fit their needs.Chapter 12, "Wireless Applications," presents the various kinds of wireless applications that may be involved in a wireless solution. It introduces universal wireless application development principles, provides an overview of the components comprising an end-to-end wireless application, discusses application design considerations, and reviews some common application development approaches. The goal of the chapter is to give readers sufficient information about wireless applications and design issues to help them hone in on their best options.Chapter 13, "Support," examines the different support issues that surround a wireless solution. It explores the technical, business, and human aspects of operating and maintaining a wireless solution, noting issues, problems, and sources of assistance. The goal of the chapter is to alert readers to potential support issues and offer suggestions for overcoming those issues.The appendices provide three types of supporting materials: a questionnaire and "cheat sheets" for capturing business and technical requirements, a list of solution providers who offer the types of software, hardware, and services mentioned in the book, and a glossary of terms. A Final Note This book is meant to be a primer on wireless technology, its uses and implementation issues. As a primer, its contents are necessarily high-level and omit details that are likely to be required when designing, constructing, and deploying a wireless initiative. Furthermore, the wireless industry is evolving at an ever-increasing pace, and wh the author has invested considerable effort to ensure that the contents of this book are accurate and up-to-date, changes in the industry may obsolete portions of its content at any time. For these reasons, the author strongly advises consulting with topical experts and conducting further research before progressing on any wireless initiative.No warranties can or will be made with respect to any data, explanations, or opinions expressed herein.Ian S. HayesClarity Consulting, Inc.South Hamilton, MA