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Andy Rolfe, Gartner analyst |
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Fast Adoption of Wireless LANs Needs Careful Strategy
Wednesday, 12 March 2003
Spending on wireless LANs jumped 38 percent to US$2.3 billion worldwide last year and prices fell, on average, by about 37 percent.
These figures from Gartner Dataquest show the result of an industry moving from proprietary systems offering low bandwidth at high cost to one offering standards-based products oat high bandwidth and lower cost.
However, the standards for wireless LANs are still incomplete, as Ian Keene explained when starting an extended session at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2003 in Florence, Italy. This session featured four Gartner analysts and included two short presentations by vendors Cisco Systems and Symbol Technologies.
Keene says that wireless LANs are mature enough to deploy, though carefully. He says that equipment following the 802.11b standard and certified with the WiFi mark may be deployed now, but enterprises should keep track of evolving standards and regulatory constraints to look for other solutions beginning in 2004.
Most wireless LANs are being installed in enterprise premises but there is a growing prospect of traveling users being able to connect to a wireless LAN at a hot spot site. Jason Chapman says that these are slowly appearing in Europe but can incur high access charges.
Andy Rolfe reassured some attendees when he said wireless LANs can be made secure and this can be done in multi-vendor environments. The key to this is to use the WiFi Protected Access (WPA) protocols developed by the WiFi Alliance.
In addition to security, enterprises need to consider manageability and functionality when drawing up a wireless LAN strategy. Neil Rickard suggests that all three factors usually indicate that using a single vendor makes most sense although use of the simple network management protocol (SNMP) should enable manageability in a multi-vendor system.
Keene had already stressed the importance of defining a strategy for wireless LANs. By 2007, 90 percent of professional laptops will ship with the capability installed, and users will demand that they be allowed to use it. No enterprise can ignore wireless LANs.
Jonathan Green-Armytage
Gartner Staff
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