Bracing For The Boom

Computerworld - Wireless Web technology appears to be catching on, at least on Wall Street if not yet in the rest of the business world. The Global Markets Division of The Chase Manhattan Bank in New York, for example, implemented Global Market Pro, developed by wireless application service provider Datalink.net in San Jose.
"It cuts the time I spend using my handheld by 30%," says Glen Havlicek, managing director of domestic treasury at Chase Global Markets.
Global Market Pro operates on a wide range of equipment, such as two-way pagers, Waterloo, Ontario-based Research In Motion Ltd.'s (RIM) 950 wireless handhelds, Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) phones and Santa Clara, Calif.-based Palm Inc.'s Palm VII. The service offers real-time financial data from information sources like Reuters Ltd. and Market News International Inc. The data is captured by Datalink, relayed to Atlanta-based BellSouth Corp. over a landline and transmitted wirelessly throughout the country. According to Havlicek, customization is a simple matter of logging on to a Datalink-hosted personal site to specify content and format.
Unique Problems
While the Chase system is among the pacesetters in the financial sector, it doesn't yet contain the element that elicits terror in some quarters: wireless accessing of corporate networks on a massive scale. With that comes a unique package of problems such as Web page formatting for small screens, the establishment of virtual private networks (VPN) and, of course, security.
Analysts predict that by 2003, more people will be accessing the Web from wireless and handheld devices than from conventional PCs. International Data Corp. (IDC) in Framingham, Mass., for instance, predicts there will be 720 million mobile Internet subscribers, compared with 525 million wired users by that time.
"Those who treat the arrival of wireless access to the Internet as just another terminal device and protocol to worry about will find themselves as far behind as those that thought the Internet was not relevant to their industry or community," says Simon Hayward, research director at Gartner Group Inc. in Stamford, Conn.
But other than the financial services sector, few industries have been paying attention to these forecasts. A survey conducted by Boston-based AMR Research Inc. reveals that 69% of manufacturing firms allocated no funds for wireless this year. Five percent said they plan to spend on wireless next year, and 8% plan to in 2002. The numbers are only marginally better in industries such as retail, telecommunications and health care.
What's holding companies back from the wireless bandwagon? The answer is complex and has to do with worries about