If your company is like most, you have tech-savvy employees bringing wireless Internet devices, such as PDA’s and cell phones, in to work. They’re using these devices to carry around their contacts, calendars and more. They may also be using their cell phones and PDA’s to access information wirelessly, using WAP, web clippings and even web browsers and email clients.
Now is the time to develop a corporate strategy for handling these devices. Companies that fail to do this will have to play catch up as wireless devices become ubiquitous. They’ll be faced with additional costs to create a system for managing these devices and distributing content to them. Finally, they’ll miss out on opportunities because they are not ready to handle customer’s wireless needs.
There are parallels that can be made with the way other technologies have entered the Enterprise in recent years. In the early 90’s, personal computers started appearing on the desktops of individuals and within business units of most companies. Accounting and publishing areas brought in computers to meet their specific needs. This often happened without centralized management or strategy. Because of this, many companies are still working towards the goal of effectively deploying and managing desktop computers.
The same thing has happened with many company’s Internet and intranet web sites. These sites developed under the control of various business units, often without strong central management. This has resulted in sites that are a mish-mash of writing styles, content, and looks. More significantly, these sites have been built with a variety of tools, making it difficult to make large-scale changes and to move the content to other formats. Because of this, many companies are now reworking their sites and their Internet strategies to provide central management, consistent development, and greater portability of content.
Companies that fail to jump in and create a wireless strategy will face similar problems in just a few years. To avoid this, you should create policies for these devices that empower users while promoting corporate needs. Look at deploying a subset of your existing content and applications to wireless devices. Exploit these devices to provide portable access to company information, and to allow users to access and input data into corporate applications.
Companies that act rather than react to wireless Internet technology will reap the greatest benefits, and avoid playing catch up in the years to come.
Web Resources
http://www.palm.com/wireless/ is the place to look for information on
developing Palm Query Applications, sometimes called “web clippings”.
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