Good article on wireless. Security concerns will be a priority for those implementing a wireless strategy for their company...
CTIA preview: What happened to wireless?
By Carmen Nobel
eWEEK
March 18, 2001 9:00 PM PT
A year after several hundred companies including Sun Microsystems Inc. and America Online
Inc. converged on New Orleans and the CTIA Wireless show to predict that new killer
applications would soon make wireless devices overtake PCs, much of that promise is still
unfulfilled.
In particular, over the course of the last 12 months, wireless carriers have been slower to offer
services than application developers expected. As a result, developers have shifted gears to focus
on mobile e-commerce applications that those carriers can eventually offer, in the hopes of
spurring the rollout of higher-speed wireless services.
But this focus on commerce applications rather than applications specifically geared for corporate
employees, which will be played out this week at the CTIA Wireless show in Las Vegas, is giving
would-be corporate wireless customers cause for concern.
For instance, Lucent
Technologies Inc., of Murray
Hill, N.J., will showcase the Mi
Life Media Platform at the
show. The software, hardware
and service package includes
voice browsing, audio content
aggregation and video
streaming capabilities.
However, the video streaming
will require better bandwidth
than current wireless
networks offer.
The platform is due in June,
when a developer's kit for it
will be available from Lucent's
Web site.
Dallas-based InterVoice-Brite
Inc. will show off a line of
application software aimed at
carriers and enter prises that want to offer wireless services to their customers.
The software includes Omnia Messaging, a unified messaging service that includes not only e-mail
but also video and music support for wireless phones; Omnia m-Commerce, a payment service for
various wireless devices; and Omnia Payment, a billing system for such services.
Cygent Inc., based in San Francisco, will run its eBusiness Support System in conjunction with
Everypath Inc.'s Mobile Application Platform to demonstrate how companies and operators can
render account and service information for mobile customers.
Focus on employees
But corporate IT managers planning to attend the show this year said they're more interested in
serving their companies' employees than offering wireless services to customers.
"I personally think that enter prises will shift emphasis from serving mobile customers to mobilizing
the enterprise: sales force, customer service, field force, etc.," said Francis Rabuck, practice leader
for mobile and wireless for Alliance Consulting Group Associates Inc., in Philadelphia.
Issues including security and application integration are also concerns.
"A major focus for us will be back-end applications as well as wireless security," said Erich
Berman, advanced technology consultant at Northwestern Mutual, in Milwaukee.
"Those are the issues that currently impact us the most. Our interest in wireless currently is
focused on [the] corporate to financial representative. ... Our policy holders and clients currently
have only a modest need to get information while mobile."
On that front, Neomar Inc. will introduce its own platform for delivering corporate data to handheld
devices, which will focus heavily on security, according to company officials in San Francisco.
"The biggest issue in my mind with this type of service is the security," said Dave Thompson, senior
manager of the security practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers, in Boston.
"If I am setting up middleware in my enterprise, then I am doing it to send corporate data out of my
network to wireless devices," Thompson said. "This raises very obvious security concerns."
The Neomar Enterprise Server sits behind a corporation's firewall, communicating with employees'
devices through a dedicated connection that eliminates the need to punch holes in the firewall,
according to company officials.
Neomar also is introducing a microbrowser that uses wireless PKI (public-key infrastructure) from
Certicom Corp. to provide authentication and enable digital signatures.
The Neomar products will be available immediately. Pricing will be on a case-by-case basis,
depending on the number of seats.
For its part, OracleMobile, the mobile division of Oracle Corp., in Redwood Shores, Calif., will
announce a more secure version of its Oracle wireless database for GSM (Global System for
Mobile Communications) networks.
With the help of SmartTrust, a subsidiary of Sonera Corp., Oracle Mobile will announce that Oracle9i
Wireless Edition will now support wireless PKI, sources said. The software is targeted at
companies looking to offer wireless access services.
In related news, the CTIA show will feature a host of applications directed toward vertical markets.
Wavelink Corp., based in Kirkland, Wash., for example, will demonstrate health care applications
that run over the Cellular Digital Packet Data network and 802.11 wireless LAN networks.
iPlanet, the Sun-Netscape Communications Corp. alliance in Palo Alto, Calif., and Oracle will
discuss plans to extend their wireless commerce offerings. |
