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Just consider this: Automobile giant Ford Motor Company, in January, signed an agreement with wireless operator Sprint that will free more than 8,000 Ford employees of their office phones-replacing them with wireless devices that will deliver virtually instantaneous wireless communications using the "walkie talkie" style Sprint PCS Ready Link service. Ford's product development unit will be among the first to transition to the new wireless services. Ford employees can be more creative, interactive and effective by becoming more mobile. Fords key objective: Enable total mobility for critical members of its workforce and increase their flexibility, mobility and productivity. Sprint's Howard Janzen says the wirelessly empowered Ford employees would be able to spend more productive time with the right people and in the right places, rather than behind a desk.

The appeal of wireless is growing closer home too. Voice, though not passé, is an old story. It's data mobility that everybody is now interested in. But data mobility is not just about Internet or email access. Wireless technologies like Bluetooth, IP, Java, Jini, WML, Wi-Fi, and XML/Voice make it possible to build applications that can be accessed by employees from any location. Once the exclusive domain of desktops, enterprise applications like CRM, ERP, and SFA are now available on the go, resulting in more efficient employees and a more profitable company.

Not many of us would even imagine that it would be feasible to put a bandwidth-hungry and mission-critical application like SAP on a mobile device or use SMS to manage the supply chain more efficiently. But, all that is happening now and that too in India. Apollo Tyres is experimenting with the possibility of making it possible for its employees to access SAP using Blackberry, while they are on the move. JK Industries has implemented a SMS-based application through which its field employees know what product has left the factory, at what time and date, and also determine when it would reach the destination. "Wireless mobility is the key to extending the reach of the applications," says Dheeraj Sinha, Head of IT at Apollo Tyres.

Workplace sans boundaries-anytime, anywhere connectivity

While the idea of a work place sans boundaries has existed for long, it was not really feasible till the emergence of wireless, especially mobile data, as a mature business friendly technology. What Ford or many other businesses are trying to do is create a seamless, all-pervasive mobile work environment without boundaries using the great benefits that wireless mobility offers.

Even though the good old, more robust, more reliable and dedicated wired networks still rule the roost, wireless is no longer playing second fiddle to wires. It is bringing in a fundamental change in business communication, changing the dynamics of the business and work places. "Wireless is very convenient, we believe it will play a significant role. It will become more and more pervasive," observes SR Balasubramanian, VP-Information Systems, Hero Honda, the world's largest two wheeler maker.

Era of pervasive networks
Enterprises are gradually entering, what one research report calls, an era of pervasive networks-"a ubiquitous fabric of computing, information, entertainment, and telemetry capability tied together by high-speed wired and wireless networks are emerging from a flurry of new communication technologies now being used in home and office networks."

Dheeraj Sinha, head-IT, Apollo Tyres "Wireless mobility is the key to extending the reach of the applications”

According to the report Pervasive Networks: Mobility, Wireless, and Wireline Connectivity for Residential and Enterprise Applications, 2005-2009 by Insight Research Corporation, pervasive networking takes communications mobility to the next level. Wireless networks provide mobility, and mobile computing offers anytime, anywhere connectivity to the Internet and to other users, though in both cases users still must initiate access to the network. With pervasive networks and pervasive computing, numerous landline and wireless systems will integrate seamlessly, and will be on all the time. The report says that even though telecom carriers do not offer this type of continuous communication as a service today, the pieces are already in place, or will soon be. These services will extend the anytime, anywhere concept of cellular mobility to its logical end all the time, everywhere.

Driving tangible productivity gains
Where does all this lead to? Gains, surely. Data mobility is making businesses more efficient and work force more productive, leading to increased business profitability. A study conducted by OMNI Consulting Group LLP released a couple of weeks back shows that use of mobile data services increases global workforce productivity by 13.4%, in terms of total factor productivity (TFP), per week on average for a full-time worker. Another study 'Affirming the Mobility Quotient: How Wireless Connectivity and Services are Shaping Worker Productivity' shows the substantive, positive impact of mobile data services on worker productivity. TFP is the economic method for how well a business utilizes its capital, labor and mobile technology resources to produce its goods and services. The study also observes that use of mobile data services by US workers contributed 1.9% to the GDP of approximately $10.4 tn in the calendar year 2003, a 23.6% increase over the impact between 2001 and 2002, and an overall improvement of 42.7% from 1999. Conforming to normal economies of scale, OMNI expects similar increases worldwide in the acceleration of mobility's impact on economic performance.

The study says that since 2003, businesses continue to show strategic investments in mobile services as noted by an adjusted annual increase of 11.8% adjusted gross spending for the first half of calendar year 2004. This signifies that mobility is sharply rising as businesses and workers continue to recognize the long-term benefit on workforce productivity, empowerment and access to real-time mobility data.

Ravi Shekhar Pandey in New Delhi

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