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Mobile Enterprise Applications

Mobile enterprise applications provide solutions to a large mobile user community that needs to exchange information with centrally located systems and users. These applications include transaction- based applications, information distribution applications, and E-mail and messaging-based applications. For example, mobile enterprise applications for a sales force of 500 people may include order entry, inventory status checking, electronic product catalogs, electronic sales report distribution, forecasting, pipeline management, contact reporting, and E-mail. A mobile enterprise application solution could make all of these applications and more available to hundreds of mobile salespeople through a common, easy-to-use interface.

Mobile enterprise application systems provide the most utility and payback of all the wireless solutions for the following reasons:

  They allow an organization to automate within one system many key line-of-business functions that focus on increasing revenue, improving customer satisfaction, and decreasing costs.
  They provide a client/server framework in which to implement a mobile client/server system that is highly scalable because it was designed for hundreds of users.
  They allow for efficient use of land- line, LAN, and wireless networks, so that users can choose the protocol or transport most appropriate to such conditions as the time of the connection or the application type.
  They provide sophisticated application services including posting into central databases, querying from central databases, routing and sharing of transactional information, and automatic and efficient updating of messaging-based applications.

Exhibit 1 summarizes the major application issues and decision criteria that organizations should consider when choosing a wireless application solution.

CHOOSING WIRELESS PRODUCTS

Much of the infrastructure for certain wireless technologies is either immature or under construction, and some wireless service providers require that an application be developed to a nonstandard protocol or application programming interface (API). As a result, organizations should develop a communications and applications strategy that provides the most flexibility regardless of which technologies or services ultimately gain widespread marketplace acceptance. There are two basic ways to do this:


Exhibit 1.   Issues and Decision Criteria by Type of Wireless Application

1.  Use middleware APIs or developer kits to develop wireless applications.
2.  Use a system for communications management that provides an interface based on a high- level graphical user interface (GUI) to set up and maintain multiple wireless technologies.

Using Middleware APIs and Developer Kits

Some vendors offer middleware APIs that shelter organizations from having to learn how to connect over RAM, Ardis, CDPD, or analog cellular networks. By developing to the vendor’s API set, organizations can choose different wireless providers or switch from one to another through a simple programming change. Vendors of middleware APIs claim to provide anywhere, any-protocol access.

The basic advantage to using middleware APIs is they allow organizations to skip the details of understanding, testing, and debugging communications. Many APIs also provide communications capabilities for landline and local area networks.

Middleware APIs also have disadvantages, some of which are:

  Many of them are not based on industry standard messaging APIs, so organizations must develop and maintain applications using a nonstandard API.
  They require organizations to program (i.e., custom build) functionality that is already available in various systems for communications management.
  Many of the companies that offer middleware APIs are new and small; their long-term stability may be less certain than that of existing wireless service providers.

Systems for Communications Management

A system for communications management can provide an organization with support for many wireless technologies. A comprehensive system for communications management can also provide functionality in the area of systems management, software updates, file transfer, E-mail and messaging, and scheduling of tasks to take place over any of the various wireless services.

The major benefits of a system for communications management include:

  Provision of capabilities that organizations would otherwise have to develop for themselves using middleware APIs.
  Powerful functionality in the setup and maintenance of mobile users.
  The benefits of an API set or developer kit, because most systems provide interfaces and APIs.

Systems for communications management also ensure that the messaging layer on which applications are built can support future anticipated wireless services or APIs. In this way, an application can take advantage of future wireless services without additional development.

SUMMARY

Wireless communications offer organizations the opportunity to extend the benefits of automation to hundreds of thousands of remote or mobile workers, across states and continents, who lack access to traditional dedicated networking. The technology available today simplifies the task of synchronizing information flow in the inherently unreliable dial-up and wireless communications environment. Applications that cost-effectively automate remote and mobile business processes can now be built and implemented electronically in days rather than in weeks or months. Wireless and landline information access can become transparent to the most remote and mobile activities of an organization.

Organizations that thoroughly evaluate the issues involved in choosing a wireless communications architecture and access method, wireless applications, and wireless products have taken the first step toward formulating a cost- effective strategy that generates revenue and increases customer service.


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