Opening the Enterprise to Wireless Access

Software Magazine, August, 2001

Infowave's Sal Visco: Make wireless strategy an extension of your overall IT infrastructure strategy

Industry observers say that almost two-thirds of all companies will implement a wireless enterprise solution in the next two years. No doubt wireless technology has great benefits, but along with the rewards come many potential risks. Sal Visco, CTO of Infowave Software, recently spoke with Software Magazine's West Coast Editor Elizabeth U. Harding about the need for IT decision-makers to better understand the ins and outs of wireless technology in order to implement solutions that work well for the business.

At Infowave, Visco is driving the technical architecture of the company's Wireless Business Engine, a modular wireless infrastructure. Since joining the company, his technical leadership of product development has earned Infowave market validation through a worldwide product reseller agreement with Compaq and partnerships with companies such as Intel and Nokia. Before Infowave, Visco was senior manager at IBM and established IBM's e-business solution development business unit.

Q What's a good strategy for a wireless enterprise solution?

A Your wireless strategy should really be an extension of your overall IT infrastructure strategy. It shouldn't be any different. It has the same kinds of issues--reliability, security requirements, etc. Wireless means just opening up to different access channels over different networks.

Q What are the main issues with wireless today?

A Every time you take your line-of-business applications, open them up to different access points, and get information out on different devices, the issue is always the same: Where is that information? This is critical company information, and it's very important that it gets to its destination securely, in an optimized fashion, and without making use of too many system resources.

Q Is there a convergence of wireless technology and the Internet?

A I see them as the same. A There are a lot of discussions about whether there is a wireless Internet vs. a fixed-line Internet. They should be the same. Wireless should be a natural evolution, an extension of the kinds of things we deal with in the wire-line world.

Q What are the main problems when implementing a wireless solution?

A There are lots of point solutions on the market today that all require their own server to manage the particular devices. As a result, some people have to deal with five or as many as 20 different servers that all handle security differently and have different management consoles. That gets expensive. It's expensive from a management point of view and expensive from a total cost of ownership view whenever you put in different devices.

Your IT group shouldn't have to manage more than one server. You want to have one common solution that sits behind the firewall and really manages all the access points, including dial-up access, remote access server, circuit-switch network, and even voice as an interface.

Q What are some limitations of wireless networks today?

A It really focuses in on the bandwidth issue--9600 baud or 9600 kilobits per second, even up to 14.4 kilobits per second, isn't a whole lot of bandwidth to work with. But an even bigger issue in wireless is what's referred to as latency--the time it takes to get information from my laptop right now through the wireless card to the closest base station or cell tower into the carrier over the Internet.

The TCP/IP protocol that most of the applications use was never intended for a high-latency network like wireless networks. It tends to time out, thinking there is congestion on the network. So your performance tends to degrade quickly.

If you don't have an optimized delivery mechanism, TCP/IP just won't do it. It doesn't give you the reliability and security required. It doesn't give you the optimization you need.

Q How does Infowave solve some of these problems?

A Infowave has been committed to solving wire-less infrastructure problems since we began shipping products in 1996. We learned a lot about wireless data issues. Infowave today is a wireless solution that really knows the network and is intelligent about how to send data back and forth. We've optimized Infowave [Wireless Business Engine] for this environment.

Q Does the Wireless Business Engine access back-end systems?

A Absolutely. One of the key requirements is accessing your intranet. Our product has what we call a Web Connector that gives you full access to your intranet. I can hit our CRM system through our Web interface and am able to run it on my laptop.

Q Can the Wireless Business Engine handle voice and data?

A When you receive an e-mail on your smart WAP [wireless access protocol] phone, for instance, you can type your reply on a keyboard or we give you the option to call this person. We do an automatic look-up of this person's phone number in a global address list or we even pull phone numbers out of the e-mail text.

Q How can people protect their wireless investment for the future?