Enterprise WLAN Technology Flourishes
Enterprises are finding that wireless LAN (WLAN)
technology is good for business: providing workers with
more flexible connection to the corporate network can
raise productivity as well as increase the overall agility
of the enterprise.
Not surprisingly, then, industry analysts are finding
companies enthusiastic about WLAN. According to a
Forrester Research survey conducted in June 2007,
“planned adoption of in-house WLANs continues to grow
in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region, with
46 percent of European enterprises having already
adopted a WLAN, while 30 percent have an interest in
deploying, suggesting a continuing trend towards more
widespread adoption
1
”
. According to Gartner’s Wireless
LAN Equipment Forecast, “Global spending on the
enterprise Wireless LAN market is expected to increase
by 8 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR)
between 2005 and 2010
2
”.
WLAN deployments are particularly prevalent in vertical
industries such as healthcare, retail, education and
logistics. In these areas, mobility is woven into the fabric
of everyday operations. For instance, healthcare workers
in hospitals are constantly on the move as they attend to
patients. Being able to gain immediate access to patient-
related information from anywhere in the hospital can
dramatically improve decisions and outcomes for
patients and boost healthcare workers' efficiency.
In the retail world, the ability for workers to respond
quickly to customers' questions from anywhere in the
store can significantly enhance the customer retail
experience and the likelihood of a sale. On university
campuses, liberating instructors and students from the
constraints of wired network access opens new
possibilities for more creative and effective instruction
and research.
More broadly, powerful new applications are emerging
that enhance the attractiveness of WLANs in areas
beyond the early-adopting vertical industries. These
applications include Voice over WLAN (VoWLAN), which
combines WLAN and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)
technologies to enable voice communications over a
WLAN, and guest access, which is the need to permit yet
control network access by non-employees. The future
appears bright with other application areas such as
location-based services and presence as well. For users
and network administrators alike, the promise of using
one network fabric, WLAN, to deploy these diverse
emerging applications is very compelling..
Challenges to WLAN Adoption
Despite the obvious advantages of WLAN, many
enterprises remain on the sidelines. Some are reluctant
to entrust sensitive corporate information to WLANs,
concerned about security safeguards for data protection,
user authentication, rogue device detection and
unauthorized intrusions. Other enterprises balk at the
added complexity of managing separate wired and
wireless networks.
2
1
Chris Silva, "Tackling Ubiquitous Enterprise Mobility".
Forrester, June 2007 (based on 166 respondents).
2
Christian Canales, “Forecast: Wireless LAN Equipment, Worldwide,
2003-2010”. Gartner, June 2006.
