You would have made a laughing stock of yourself if you suggested a few years ago that it would be a good idea to network an office using only wireless technology. The reason is not far to seek.

Wireless was unreliable, insecure, unmanageable, couldn’t easily provide the capacity or bandwidth needed – a bad idea all round. However, the scenario has undergone a sea change. Today, the notion of a wireless office – where most, if not all, access, including voice, is over a Wi-Fi network – has hardly taken the world by storm. But it is beginning to attract interest and credibility.

Wi-Fi allows employees to work smarter and more efficiently by giving them more ubiquitous access to resources they need without being chained to a desk. This allows decisions to be made much faster, more patients to be seen in one day, more students educated in an hour and more orders taken in minutes. And with the emergence of multimedia applications, such as voice and video over IP, Wi-Fi now allows much more information to be available to workers wherever they are in the building, at home or at the coffee shop.

Most companies know very little about how Wi-Fi works or why Wi-Fi reliability and performance suffer. Our biggest obstacle is educating the market on what is needed to solve these problems, how the technology works and how it is best deployed.

Our other big challenge is market awareness. For any new company entering a crowded market, it is difficult to gain the mindshare of your target audience – who has already been conditioned to think a certain way about wireless networking. As a relatively small company, competing with the likes of Cisco, it is difficult to compete for the attention of our prospects by spending huge amounts of money. Cisco’s biggest strength is now their size, not their technology innovation. Our biggest strength is our technology innovation, not our size.

Finally, the Wi-Fi market is extremely competitive and crowded with a myriad of products ranging from consumer Wi-Fi to metro Wi-Fi, enterprise Wi-Fi to carrier Wi-Fi. With such a vast competitive landscape, it can be difficult for a company of our size to compete. However, if a company has a truly unique solution that adds demonstrable value, the market will notice. It just won’t happen overnight.

The Advantages of Going Wireless
The key advantages associated with the use of wireless office are based on the name of the technology itself. That is a wireless office represents a communications network formed without the use of wires. Let us turn our attention to the advantages associated with being able to form a communications network that uses the air as transmission medium.

One of the key advantages associated with the utilization of wireless office is economics. A large portion of economic savings associated with the use of wireless technology results from the ability to use the air as the transmission medium.

The benefits, including cost savings, productivity boosts, and the ability to deploy applications, such as locationing and tracking that are only possible with wireless, are becoming more difficult to dismiss, if not always easy to quantify. Even these days, the peripheral manufacturers are also realizing the advantage of wireless devices and bringing out solutions to suit the entire environment. One of the key emissaries of wireless peripherals is HP, which is bringing out a number of printers with wireless capability. V. Krishnan, Head – Marketing, Imaging and Printing Group, HP India, says, “Mobility is one of life's great enablers enriching, empowering and connecting our lives. Wireless printing is the ‘next big thing’ on offer. Work anywhere you need to, inside the office and out, with HP mobile and wireless printing solutions. HP provides the tools you need to organize your office or enterprise in ways that facilitate work — all without the compromises of wires and walls.”

He adds, “Not long ago, wireless printing was an impractical dream for most business owners. Costs were high. The hassle factor was even higher. But with the push for all things mobile, the technology pieces are in place now, the costs have come down substantially and people are starting to take advantage of it. Over the last few years, there have also been dramatic improvements in some of the key areas of wireless printing: security, speed, and ease of use.”
Apart from HP, Canon and Xerox also are advocating for wireless and secure printing.

The downside trade-offs meanwhile have largely disappeared, even if the perception persists among some IT professionals of Wi-Fi as unreliable, unsecured, etc.

With a wireless network, organizations can allow their employees to access the corporate network anywhere in the office building. Employees have greater scope to conduct inter-office meetings and enterprises can ensure less time is lost when travelling between different office sites, thereby maintaining high productivity.
The wireless office system also makes employees more efficient because they can now answer calls at any time as if they were at their desks, even when they’re in another office. Added to this, they have access to business-critical documents anywhere they go, which will help them deliver better customer service.

The whole paradigm is changing and wireless is actually becoming more and more important as mobility becomes more and more important to an organization.

“Wireless office environment market is the fastest growing market today. Wireless is a technology that is sweeping the globe and being integrated into a wide variety of electronic devices these days. It is strategically brilliant decision to go for Wireless technology,” says Jayesh Kotak, VP – Product Management, D-Link India Ltd.

“With wireless technology functioning in different devices, these electronic tools and gadgets are able to seamlessly connect with each other and communicate and transfer voice, video and data simultaneously. Every year, you can rely WIRELESS to deliver the most innovative new developments in today’s market. Demand for wireless is growing and deployments are accelerating,” adds Jayesh Kotak.

It is big and getting bigger. When given the choice between wires and no wires, workers will choose wireless. However, this will only be the case if the wireless network is reliable. This has been a big problem for Wi-Fi technology. Wi-Fi was developed as a technology of convenience.

But if it doesn’t work, it is no longer acceptable.

With laptops surpassing desktop computers as the number one computing device on the planet and with billions of handheld devices now shipping with integrated Wi-Fi, the expectation for a reliable and consistent experience is overwhelming for business of all shapes and sizes.

The worldwide market for wireless LAN equipment, according to experts like IDC and Dell’O Group, will surpass $5 billion by 2012.

While user mobility will be a primary driver of the wireless office, simplicity, ease of user and infrastructure savings are also having a major impact. By eliminating the need to physically cable a building with Ethernet, but still provide reliable, high-speed connectivity, companies can save time and money while enjoying a more flexible computer networked environment.

“As companies are pressured to cut costs, reduce staff and look hard and fast at technology investments, Wi-Fi must become simpler to deploy, easier to manage, reliable and ultra-fast. Ruckus Wireless has innovated smarter Wi-Fi technology precisely focussed on these values to enable the wireless office,” says Sudarshan Boosupali, General Manager, Ruckus Wireless India.

“When you take your office wireless, workers are more dynamic, teams can be more productive, and the office environment is less cluttered. These changes can revolutionize your business. Besides getting rid of cables and solving wiring problems, a wireless office means that workers can work where they’re needed, not just from their desks. Teams work and a growing business can add new employees with greater ease than with a wired network,” says Jayesh Kotak.

The concept of Going Wireless is in the early-adopter stage. CIOs like the concept and want to ensure that whatever network investments they make today will leave them the option to go all-wireless in future. But most are not ready to pull the plugs yet. However, that will change.

Drivers for adopting an All-Wireless Strategy
One of the drivers for adopting an all-wireless strategy by the companies is the trend to virtual workforces and office “hoteling”. More and more employees work part of the time at home or at client or satellite sites, and then come to a central office where they may not have a permanent workstation.

An all-wireless network makes this kind of arrangement easier to manage, especially one that uses a unified security approach based on user identity rather than method of access. Users with laptops can easily log in to the corporate network wherever they go, whether over the WLAN, corporate WAN, or a public network.

With the use of an all-wireless network, this kind of arrangement becomes easier to manage, especially one that uses a unified security approach based on user identity rather than method of access. Users with laptops can easily log in to the corporate network wherever they go, whether over the WLAN, corporate WAN, or a public network.

The increasing trend of intra-office mobility is another reason for the wireless offce gaining attraction. Many workers today spend most of their time away from their assigned offices, in client and team meetings, co-workers’ offices, labs, and on factory floors.

The freedom of wireless makes the employees more efficient. According to a survey, they can save at least five hours a week as a result of wireless office.
Finally, there are applications that are only possible with wireless. RFID tracking that rides on top of a Wi-Fi network can be used not just to track assets, but also people.

Locationing technology could also be used to refine facility security systems, sending out alerts when non-authorized personnel enter a restricted area. Or, it could be used for network security to ensure visitors to a facility only have access to the network in the room or area they have been assigned.

Disadvantages of Wireless Office
Despite the mobile workforce movement however, enterprises are sometimes reluctant to embrace wireless technology because of issues of performance and security. Wireless technology is still a relatively new venture in networks and some feel that the security systems needed to lock up organizations are not yet in place.

If we note a number of advantages associated with the use of wireless office, we would be remiss if we did not mention the other side of the coin and discuss some of the disadvantages associated with the use of wireless office.

Three basic disadvantages are associated with the use of wireless office. Those disadvantages include the time, the cost, and effort required to learn a new technology; the proliferation of wireless LAN standards, and security.

This is a commonly held belief about wireless networks – that they are not secure. Many myths and misleading facts have circulated about wireless security that have led to this belief. But many disagree with the idea that wireless networks cannot be secured to the same degree as wired.

Whether you use wired or wireless, it is just basically a medium to access corporate information – so irrespective of how you do it, security has to be built in, in both the ways you do it. It is not the wireless that's insecure – it is the implementation of the security layer on top of the media access layer that makes it either secure or insecure.

Working with Vendors Products
The key to success in constructing a wireless office lies in the correct configuration of equipment, it is imperative to examine the configuration setting required to install products from different vendors.

Indian Scene
In India, there is still a lot to be learned about wireless security technologies, and a lot of misinformation that needs to be dispelled. There is still a need to have a long way to go in terms of education. While there is a very high level of understanding in large enterprises, as we go down towards mid-market and the SMBs, that education level is actually dwindling. And that's also one of the reasons people don't know what they can do to make their wireless network secure.

“Wireless technology is the burning topic today, as it let PCs and other electronic devices, connect wirelessly to the web. People want to wirelessly transfer MP3 files from PC in the den, so that they could listen to them on their stereo in the family room, they want to review digital photos on their big screen TV, or to watch video on handheld devices. There is no problem for Wireless to grow in Indian Market. Wireless concept is fully accepted and growing very fast in our market,” says Jayesh Kotak.

Sudarshan Boosupali says, “We are leveraging a two-tier channel distribution model to help increase our exposure within India. We are also partnering with some of the largest computer manufacturers, such as Dell India, to help us quickly cover the market. We look for highly leveraged points on which we can focus that will quickly provide reach where it would be otherwise impossible for us.”

Ruckus also participates in a variety of industry educational activities throughout India where we can evangelize our product and technologies.

Wireless networks are not just a new technology fad that it would be nice to have, though for many types of enterprises, wireless is a must. Take the example of a university, with multiple campuses and thousands of students plus staff that all need access to the network, and are unable to lay the kind of cabling that is required, whether financially or logistically.

When the option is available to a company that is opening a new office or where an enterprise is just setting up, it can be very cost-effective to dispense with copper cabling, and even use wireless VoIP telephony. Since the option is out there, security vendors are racing to catch up with market demand and ensure that wireless can be as secure as wired.

Now that myths such as WEP encryption and MAC address filtering have been dispelled, wireless security technology is moving into layer 2 technologies like WPA 2 and the emerging location-based security (LBS) technologies as well as measures like virtual private networks (VPNs), to secure the corporate network.

Finally…
The wireless office may be an idea whose time has come – or it might take some more years to mature. But it can be said with certainty that the inevitable convergence of wireless in the office and wireless outside the office means total wirelessness will become a reality for many companies sooner rather than later.