Competition in the mobile remote access space has begun to heat up of late, most notably as several
companies have turned their attention to the same target-the corporate mobile businessman.
Mobile remote access
applications long have been a staple of the wireless data industry, but traditionally have been confined primarily to
vertical market customers-such as utility and public-safety personnel-characterized by relatively low subscriber
numbers and network use.
This advancement marks the next stage in the evolution of the technology, and is
expected to be a period of natural selection among those competing for business.
“These will be the first set of
applications that are adopted in the horizontal market,” said Rich Luhr, director of technology strategy at Hershel
Shosteck Associates Ltd. “Corporate customers are going to be the early adopters of wireless data services, and
all players are now going after them.”
Bob Egan, research director for the Gartner Group, said this
advancement marks the second phase of growth for the wireless remote access field. In the first phase, players were
mostly middleware providers addressing vertical markets using mostly packet data networks. Interested customers
would buy a middleware package and were left on their own to decide which public network to use or hire a systems
integrator for assistance.
In this next phase, providers are offering more complete solution packages that include
network airtime and end-user devices. Egan calls them Wireless Internet Service Providers. Also, cellular and personal
communications services carriers have become interested in offering mobile remote access services, using these WISPs
as outsourced providers of the technology.
“Carriers don’t know how to sell data,” Egan explained.
“Their sales forces don’t know how to address corporate (information technology) managers’
needs.”
Wireless Knowledge L.L.C., Wireless Telecom Inc.’s Mobile-Logic, Research In Motion Ltd.’s
BlackBerry and Fujitsu Software Corp.’s ByeDesk are just a few of the many examples out there today that hope to take
up this slack.
“It’s a very immature market and anything can happen,” said Luhr, who is in the process
of writing a white paper on the subject, tentatively titled “Wireless Remote Access: Profit Opportunities for the
Future.”
“I think it’s a real wide-open horse race,” Luhr continued. “Like the beginning of
any new technology, there are a lot of people throwing their hat in right now, and in a year or so, they may not be there
anymore.”
Solutions
There are two types of mobile remote access solutions-those that begin at the
corporate private intranet and migrate out to the public wireless environment; and those that begin in the public
network and migrate in to add private intranet data.
The difference is the customer. Companies like WTI focus on
the former, putting together a package complete with airtime and handsets to sell to a corporation looking for a mobile
access solution. The newer entrants, like Wireless Knowledge, target the latter-wireless carriers that want to offer data
services but either don’t know how or don’t want to bother with the details.
Key to both is meeting the demands of
the business world.
“Rather than a given corporation making a specific decision on one carrier, they want to
insulate themselves from the carrier decision,” Egan said. That’s why many of the new players, like Wireless
Knowledge, are focusing on being carrier-independent.
Another necessity is ensuring customers need not alter their
inner-firewall networks in any way.
“They’ve got them tweaked just the way they want them,” said
Luhr. “The people addressing this market have to figure out a way to deal with this to get in the
door.”
Security issues
One big issue is security. Don Bergal, vice president of marketing at WTI, which
rolled out its MobileLogic system in 1997, said “security has been the big stumbling block. I think you’ll find that
with any service bureau … Getting past that and meeting security needs … is of the highest importance.”
He
said connecting a private intranet to a public network, with the appropriate security measures, is by no means an easy
task.
“I would say any company that is oversimplifying this is going to face some harsh
realities.”
Should these challenges be met, and the corporate-user market pay off, expect to see similar
solutions hit the mass-consumer, non-business market. Wireless Knowledge, for instance, already plans to offer Web-
hosting services, so those without Exchange servers or corporate intranets can take advantage of similar
services.
The new back office
This step will prove a precursor to phase III, which, according to Egan, is where
back-office applications will have mobility built into them. In today’s phase II paradigm, existing back-office
applications gain mobility via third-party service bureaus. Phase III dictates that next-generation back-office
applications will be built with wireless access in mind from the get-go.
“An integrated solution insulated of
airlink and hardware device capability issues,” Egan explained. “The solutions themselves will be device
and network aware.”
Carriers themselves will move from being access pipes to content providers. Rather than
outsourcing these functions to companies like Wireless Knowledge, carriers will provide the same services in-house, he
said.
“There are some very significant business reasons why this is going to succeed,” Egan said of the
wireless remote access market. “It’s just a matter of how it will succeed … It depends not only on their vision of
how, but their execution.”
“This wireless remote access market is going to get very large,” agreed
Luhr. “It has to. If this doesn’t take off, it throws the whole wireless data concept into doubt. This should be a
slam-dunk.”
