SANTA CLARA, Calif.-Here we go again.
After 10 years of asking the question, we finally have an answer.
“Everybody has been asking when wireless data is going to come,” said Tom Wheeler, CTIA president and chief executive officer, at the closing keynote of the organization’s Wireless I.T. show here last week. “Well folks, it’s here.”
The wireless data love fest is in full swing and shows few signs of slowing down, if the buzz at this year’s show was at all indicative of nationwide sentiment. Everywhere you looked at the event, there were content developers, application developers, device manufacturers and others all gathering to learn how to talk to each other, and in the end, make a buck.
But for all the opportunity, there are also many risks. With wireless data coming to realization, there is a danger for carriers of losing control in the face of the many newcomers. As the old saying goes: Be careful what you wish for; you just may get it.
The opportunity talked about today apparently is strong enough to overcome the mainstream press attack against WAP, the continued lack of spectrum and the lack of clear business models. This is the game, and everybody is here to play.
The moniker Wireless I.T. points to the obvious direction all this is going. Behind this wireless data growth simply is the ability to wirelessly extend enterprise applications. That’s not to say there wasn’t plenty of talk about entertainment and m-commerce services as well, but on a road where content is king, it’s enterprise mobility that drives this car.
“It’s going go be a lot more than stocks, movie tickets and news,” said Peter Beiman, chief marketing officer at StarRemote Wireless. “The thing these people will be doing is their jobs.”
At one session, the discussion centered around enterprise mobility and the many questions that still surround it. What is the business model that works for enterprises to implement these applications? Should they develop wireless access in-house or go to a wireless application service provider? What is the return on investment? How are security issues being met?
Bob Hathaway, vice president of engineering at Cerulean, now part of Aether Systems Inc., said the challenge is that corporations no longer house all their data in-house at the corporate information technology data center. The Internet has distributed data in many areas. To offer compelling solutions, he said, you have to think from the user’s point of view, not the data center point of view.
“Corporations are all still really leery about rolling this stuff out,” said Andrew Seybold, moderating a session called Developing Mobile Information Strategies for the Enterprise. “They hear about all these technologies and they’re confused.”
Far from a negative, this is seen by many as an opportunity. Key among the opportunities are wireless ASPs, who promote their ability to cut through the confusion and just make it happen without the corporation needing to know a thing about it.
At the end of the day, IT managers have no choice but to embrace wireless. Just as the notebook computer caused IT managers to start thinking about how to integrate those devices into their systems, so must they now incorporate wireless devices and palmtops into their views. It’s either that, or lose control altogether.
“For the most part, that doesn’t make them feel all warm and fuzzy,” Seybold said.
But the vast proliferation of devices with their different features and technologies make this difficult. So if there was one message attendees could walk away with, it was that there’s a need for someone to make this easy for developers.
“There is no one platform to develop to and this makes it very difficult,” said Jim Cavalier, product manager of mobile and wireless products at Lotus Development Corp. “It’s important that tools start being generated that help corporations get that data out.”
Another reason so much emphasis is given to mobile enterprise applications is because a cloud of confusion surrounds the path to the consumer market.
“Carriers are incompetent marketers of this,” said Alan Reiter of Wireless Internet and Mobile Computing at the Wireless Data University, held the day before Wireless I.T. started.
He pointed to the many iterations of this overseas. In Japan, you can download your own custom screensaver or background image for a phone’s screen. You may compose you own custom ring tones using certain programs in Europe. You’ve got games, gambling and even pornography.
“Stop what you’re doing on mobilizing corporations-It’s SEX!” Reiter joked.
Although there are many opportunities to capitalize off of the many entertainment options wireless data presents, personalization is key for this to happen, and that is a challenge many in the industry have yet to meet.
“We hardly personalize even the cover of our phones, let alone the content,” Reiter said. “When you give the ability to download personal icons, for example, you change the way people look at their phones. It’s not a toaster, a single-purpose dumb device. It’s a platform.”
But the slow going in the United States is not just the fault of the wireless players. The Internet community has to take some of the blame. Many were at Wireless I.T. to learn how to better play their roles.
“In some ways, the Internet community in the U.S. doesn’t get it,” Reiter said. “If you don’t have a 26-inch screen and a T1 line, they don’t want to talk to you.”
Entertainment content and devices were given some play as well.
But perhaps the greatest vision for the future gained at Wireless I.T. is a real move toward changing the guard. Attendees were newer to the industry and younger than in the past, hailing from a whole new way of doing business. The old guard mentality of big-box switches housing all the services on a network is being destroyed.
“We’re looking at really new economics here in wireless,” Reiter said. “We’re looking at new ways to do business. New companies are coming in. The old rules don’t apply anymore.”
While everyone agrees that wireless Internet has the opportunity to revolutionize a whole host of industries, the industry facing the greatest upheaval is wireless.
“Wireless carriers are the most vulnerable in terms of seeing their revenues whittle away,” Reiter said. “Value chains are changing. The mammals are eating the dinosaurs’ eggs.”
