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Wireless adoption in enterprises has been much talked about for
the last few years. The pace of wireless adoption amongst enterprises has been
very slow. In fact, till now, wireless adoption has been limited to enterprises
providing some kind of wireless connectivity through laptop or mobile devices to
its employees to ensure that they remain connected with their head offices. The
good news now is that wireless is slowly becoming an integral part of an
enterprise's overall IT and communication strategy. Enterprises are now
opening up to the idea of taking services of specialized wireless solution
providers so that they can plan wireless strategy accordingly. Falling prices of
high-end mobile devices has also played an important role in the mainstreaming
of mobility among enterprises. According to a recent analyst study the mobile
enterprise application market reached $1.2 bn in 2005 and is forecast to grow to
$3.5 bn in 2010.
Changing Landscape
Email and browsing used to be the only application till some time back. They
too were not seamless. But that is not the case now. Several solution providers
including some of the big names have gotten into the bandwagon of providing
killer business applications for enterprises. In fact, there are lots of
collaboration going on for this. For example, SAP closely works with industry
leaders in the wireless arena including Intel, Panasonic, Microsoft, HP, and
Nokia among others. Companies are increasingly using non-email applications like
VoIP over WLAN and even using Wi-Fi for order processing, updated inventory
information requirements, remote monitoring using wireless Internet cameras.
According to Nagaraj Bhargava, director, Marketing and Strategic Initiatives at
SAP India, "The earlier generation of mobile applications focused on a tiny
browser, which ignored the performance constraints of the devices and the needs
of individual users. The user was always not connected even in the best of
mobile networks and real time connectivity was always not needed. What was
needed was a reliable network to exchange data! This is what the current
generation of wireless devices address." But things are changing. Bhargava
says, "Today, there are several applications that have the functionality
helping to meet the needs of a user who gets disconnected by completing the
process which has already been mobilized, by creating layers of processes. These
layers smartly move data back and forth so that information is processed during
connectivity. Thus, the user can accomplish his tasks without worrying whether
he is connected or disconnected."
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"Today, companies have
dispersed workers who have to operate as a single connected team.
Employees have to be agile and make on the spot decisions"
-Vijay Shukla, country head, Value First |
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"Earlier our offerings
were very limited, but now we are ready to provide several mobile
applications to enterprises customers"
-Harsh Juneja, GM, Enterprise Business Unit, Tata Teleservices, |
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"The earlier generation
of mobile applications focused on a tiny browser, which ignored the
performance constraints of the devices"
-Nagaraj Bhargava, director, Marketing and Strategic Initiatives,
SAP India |
The Drivers
The need of the workforce to remain connected for increased productivity and
staying ahead of competition by better decision-making are some of the main
drivers for companies going for wireless. In the end, all of these result in
improved customer satisfaction. According to Vijay Shukla, country head, Value
First, a mobile messaging company, "Today, companies have dispersed workers
who have to operate as a single connected team. Employees have to be agile and
make on the spot decisions to win new customers and improve customer
satisfaction and to increase productivity of employees." He adds, "The
true value of mobile and wireless applications lies in helping users in getting
information when they need it the most."
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| The true
value of mobile and wireless applications lies in helping users in getting
information when they need it the most |
Real Catalysts
Apart from the solution vendors, it is the telecom service providers who are
acting as the real catalyst by offering mobility solutions in conjunction with
application vendors. Things have drastically improved on the connectivity front
and have become more reliable. Wireless service providers are offering
guaranteed SLAs to enterprises ensuring customers' satisfaction by providing
proper connectivity. According to Harsh Juneja, GM, Enterprise Business Unit,
Tata Teleservices, "Earlier our offerings were very limited, but now we are
ready to provide several mobile applications to the enterprises customers."
All the services providers including Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications,
Hutchison, Idea Cellular, and Tata Teleservices are offering a range of business
calls wireless services. Only exceptions are BSNL and MTNL who have not
leveraged on their widespread presence to offer these services to corporate
customers. Page(s) 1 2
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