Why Legacy Technologies Failed to Meet the Needs of Wireless Working
Over the years those responsible for supporting mobile users within the “extended enterprise”, have become aquatinted with a handful of key factors which differentiate the mobile working environment. Fixed connection LAN-based computer users have had the use of feature rich multimedia devices which benefit from substantial processing power, mains power, and unlimited, continuous access to information, applications and systems they are also locally managed and supported, and have come to expect fast, cheap and reliable network connections.
Compare their lot to that of the mobile worker who is typically equipped with a light, easy to carry, low cost device with limited memory, processor capacity and battery life.
Many early mobile projects sought to extend to such devices the applications which were built to work on PC’s connected over a high-speed communications infrastructure. They simply did not work well when applied to mobile devices over the low-bandwidth fragile communications infrastructure which has characterized the wireless world. To enable their applications to work over a wireless connection, many software solution providers developed “mobile” versions of their products. Such “mobilization” of applications has often meant the use of screen scraping, or the development of complex store and forward or synchronization techniques. However, in many instances these mobile upgrades require two to three times the original effort and cost associated with the initial LAN based deployment. In addition, mobile upgrades frequently only provide greater offline mobile access to data, not true real-time connectivity.
Seeing an opportunity which was not being well addressed a whole industry of specialist mobile software vendors arrived selling unique mobile solutions which, although understanding the new requirements and based on some well thought through architectures, were nearly always proprietary since no internationally certified standards exist. A study conducted a couple of years ago by Wheatstone Consulting surfaced no less than eight mobile system vendors which had each developed their own store and forward, message queue, synchronization or other specialised architecture for their application but none of these architectures were compatible with each other. Some even required direct control of the communications layer of the operating system presenting real problems for any project which sought to integrate two applications, and thus competing “mobility” architectures, on a single device.
All of which has historically raised doubts about the true scalability of mobile systems beyond the successful pilot projects on which most case studies are based. Assuming the integrations headaches can be addressed, mobile projects built using these tools can be, and have been, effective however future developments of the “mobilized” software is also then dependent on a 3rd party vendor or developer, another risk and a commitment of future cost which threatens return on investment calculations.
As a result of the above, mobile projects have been loaded with risk over and above the levels experienced in LAN based IT projects. And it is the demanding implementation, usability, manageability and 3rd party dependency issues which have caused some business to put mobile on the “too hard” pile projects.
You will have noticed that much of what has gone before was written in the past tense. That is because the wireless world has changed significantly, such that many of the inhibitors and risk factors have been minimized. As we have already seen, wireless broadband services are now almost ubiquitous with at least one wireless network within the reach of most UK based employees. WiFi (and soon WiMAX unless LTE gets there first!) coverage is greatly improved and even if these wireless networks are not available, the are the always-on cellular based GPRS networks with higher speed 3G slowly covering more of the map.
Another significant improvement has been the arrival of networking infrastructure components which handle the other underlying issues of wireless connectivity including unstable connections, roaming and security. Sophisticated network optimization and data compression techniques can also be applied to raise the effective speed and efficiency of wireless links the point where applications which are enterprise proven and working on the LAN can now effectively be extended to mobile workers without redevelopment or the need for special mobile versions to be written. No redevelopment translates to no additional code to maintain, no retraining and no synchronization issues. Scalable roll-outs of greater predictability are now possible with a high probability of meeting deadlines and budgets.
When used with an appropriate selection of infrastructure components, mobile networks have now matured to the point where many of the issues which gave rise to the need for unique mobile architectures have now been largely been overcome. Because the underlying issues associated with mobile and wireless working have been addressed for all applications there is no longer a need to invest in bespoke or competing architectures.
So, we can see there are now many positive drivers to deploying wirelessly connected mobile working to the organization and the technology is available to do this effectively. In my next posting I will look in more detail at the technologies available and identify the potential challenges associated with their use.
