Get Ready For A Wire-Free Enterprise
May 24, 2008
Meanwhile, overlay vendors such as Aruba, Motorola, and Trapeze treat the wired network as more or less a dumb transport for their wireless traffic. It makes for easier sales to the wireless-oriented parties in IT organizations, but this stance leaves those who must manage both with a less-than-easy feeling.
Another angle enterprise switch vendors play is to suggest that all-wireless is a better fit for the remote or branch office, rather than main sites, appealing to interest in this architecture while protecting their wire-side revenue. Most also deliver some variation on the message that IT should be about "providing flexibility to the business"--in other words, preserving wired connectivity where it exists and delivering wireless where it's wanted. Tim Purves, CTO of the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, says it's his department's aim to "align technology with business workflow processes." While that's a familiar mantra, if those processes are tied to immobile approaches that ignore the productivity increases and workflow improvements possible via a pervasive wireless network, IT must step up and champion a new way forward.
Fortunately, not all enterprise switch vendors are stonewalling. Trent Waterhouse, VP of marketing for Enterasys, says his company sees wireless as a strategic component of its business and is evaluating WLAN players with an eye toward an acquisition. Juniper is shopping around, too; it was spurned by Meru Networks, which also acts as an OEM for Foundry, on at least one occasion, say industry sources. No matter--Aerohive, Bluesocket, Colubris, and Xirrus stand out as attractive acquisition targets for enterprise switch vendors that lack their own wireless products. Trapeze might be a good fit for Nortel, if it decides to turn to its former OEM partner rather than build its own 802.11n gear.
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Truly transforming the workspace extends beyond installing access points and providing laptops, to physical reconfiguration. Take Capital One's Future of Work program. The financial services firm's 360-acre, eight-building campus almost doubled the number of employees it could house, from 650 to 1,100, by adopting the concept of hoteling. Rather than being assigned a specific location, employees who participate in this optional program have access to a generic cubicle, as well as conference rooms and open areas. Space is essentially overbooked. Each employee is assigned a telephone number that flows to a Cisco voice-over-IP phone and/or BlackBerry. The WLAN is the primary medium for network access.
"Today, work is what you do, not a place you go," says Rob Alexander, Capital One's CIO. "The wireless and mobile technologies we provide through our Future of Work environment provide our associates greater flexibility in how and where they work, which in turn improves collaboration and productivity." Employees are happy, and the company saves big on facilities.
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