Long before the dot-com bust, before the bull market crawled back into the barn, just about everybody was predicting that wireless was going to be the next hot technology. And while some of the enthusiasm for mobile business has cooled a bit as Fortune 1,000 companies have reined in their IT spending, many experts believe that this arena is still in its infancy and that the commercial potential for wireless computing remains huge.
As part of an ongoing series of roundtable discussions co-hosted by Computerworld and ebizChronicle.com, a group of IT executives recently got together in New York to discuss a variety of wireless issues such as privacy and security challenges and geographic disparities. They were:
- Tracey A. Esherick, executive vice president of online brokerage at Fidelity Investments in Boston.
- David Lambert, telecommunications analyst at National Bank Financial in Toronto.
- Dan Glessner, director of enterprise marketing at Palm Inc. in Santa Clara, Calif.
- John Distefano, vice president and practice director for the mobile-commerce and wireless services practice at Cap Gemini Ernst & Young U.S. LLC in St. Louis.
- Dan Black, director of e-commerce systems at United NetWorks, a wholly owned subsidiary of United Air Lines Inc. in Chicago.