September 2001
 

Shreds And Patches

BY KEVIN MAYER

WIRELESS CONNECTIVITY FOR THE REST OF US
Enterprise-grade wireless-enabled applications are anything but simple, since they may need to accommodate multiple alternative data sources, applications, services, and devices. Consequently, enterprise applications permitting wireless access have had a "one off" character. An enterprise would suffer the integration headaches to extend the utility of its existing investments -- considerable investments, such as those residing in the aforementioned SFA and CRM applications.

While helping to deploy these extended applications, integrators have gained experience that may be generalized or abstracted, and applied to multiple applications within these classes, and even other classes of applications, including highly configurable messaging applications. Accordingly, integrators have been repackaging their expertise and extending it, whether by way of native development, the negotiation of strategic partnerships, or outright acquisition. Gradually, they've been piecing together interfaces, stitching together elaborate middleware offerings.

STRATA-SPANNING STRATAGEMS
Companies known as systems integrators are not the only players in this space. Wireless application service providers (WASPs), database software vendors, application software vendors, and other advocates of the "mobility server" are positioning themselves as all-purpose intermediaries, courting developers, promising to enable modular, components-based application development. Ideally, a developer may concentrate on just one component or level in a larger solution, while relying on a software infrastructure framework, such as one provided by an integrator, to connect to other components -- the levels above and below -- that would complete that larger, end-to-end solution.

Developing a wireless-enabled application market, let alone isolated wireless-enabled applications, is a cooperative effort, demanding coordination on the part of specialists from all the relevant layers. For example, we should consider specialists from each of the following layers:

• Client devices and platforms. Within this layer, we could include mobile computers, everything from wireless-enabled laptops to relatively humble cell phones, provided they permitted wireless data exchange, whether via the Wireless Application Protocol or some other mechanism. We would also include wireless-enabled personal digital assistants (PDAs), which are sometimes called Personal Network Assistants (PNAs). A proliferation of PDAs (or PNAs) are available, including devices consistent with one or another of the basic PDA operating systems, namely Palm, Pocket PC/Windows CE, RIM, and Symbian/EPOC.
  
• Carrier network services. Here we could include carriers or private networks working with private radio networks, 2G, 2.5G, 3G, etc.
  
• Communications protocols. At this level we would include specialists in transport protocols, such as TCP/IP. Other types of expertise could involve messaging formats or voice gateway functionality.
  
• Network services. Here we could cite network "resources" such as authentication, network management, security, location, presence, third-party billing, quality of service monitoring, policy enforcement, etc.
  
• Application specialists. In this layer, we could emphasize horizontal applications, such as e-mail, instant messaging, enterprise resource planning, supply chain management, knowledge management, customer relationship management, and sales force automation. Also, we could mention verticals or channels that specialize in customizing horizontal applications for verticals. Finally, we could cite database connectivity, that is, the various ways in which a database may be connected to a mobility server.

CONVERGING ON THE MIDDLE
When you consider how many alternatives there are within each level, creating end-to-end solutions that would traverse all of these levels is a daunting task. And yet enabling the deployment of end-to-end solutions is the task that many industry players are now attacking. Some of these players (and their wireless server applications or frameworks) appear in this list: 724 Solutions (Wireless Internet Platform); Aether Systems (Aether Fusion Components); Air2Web (Mobile Internet Platform); AlterEgo Networks (Adaptive Performance Suite); AvantGo (AvantGo 4.0 M-Business Server); Brience (Brience 3.0 Framework); Broadbeam (Axio); CueSoft (Applause); Extended Systems (Extended System); IBM (WebSphere Everyplace); JP Mobile (SureWave Mobile Server); Microsoft (Airstream/Mobile Information Server); Oracle (Oracle 9i Application Server Wireless Edition); Orsus (Orsus Uno); Sybase/iAnywhere Solutions (iAnywhere Wireless Server); ThinAirApps (Identicon); Wireless Knowledge (Workstyle Server).

NOT-SO-RARE DEVICES
All of the activity being generated by these and other middleware players suggests that a consumer-minded focus on devices may be misplaced. In the realm of wireless-enabled enterprise applications, the enterprise may decide to support multiple devices, perhaps even multiple handheld devices. Accordingly, noisy debates over the relative merits and popularity of the Palm devices versus the iPAQ may distract more than they illuminate. Why be overly preoccupied with one or another device, when in at least some deployment scenarios, a form of screen-scraping, called transcoding, may adapt displays for presentation on multiple devices? While not exactly the height of elegance, such solutions can offer enterprises some extra flexibility. In any case, middleware issues apply not just at the device layer, but also all the way through to the enterprise's back-end data resources.

Moreover, a new generation of hybrid devices is already being sketched out, so it may be just as well to avoid being overly enamored of any one device, even the glitziest PDA. For example, Intel projects the convergence of voice and data on wireless handheld clients, the fulfillment of twin trends, the increasing bandwidth available for cellular telephony devices, and the increasing processing power of handheld computers. And while Intel concentrates on the details of its Personal Internet Client Architecture (the white paper is available on the Intel Web site), the company also recognizes the importance of drivers beyond the client. These include the emergence of low-cost, high-performance servers that will address the interfacing between information resources and wireless clients, making end-to-end capabilities a reality, as well as the emergence of distributed communications technologies enabled by service discovery software middleware.

AN OFFLINE MESSAGE
Finally, it remains that being connected isn't everything -- a good thing, too, since wireless coverage can be spotty. That is, mobile workers will, for some time to come, continue to stand a very good chance of being confounded by cost constraints (in terms of devices and subscription services), bandwidth limitations, and signal availability and signal quality issues. But there is, if all else fails, the possibility of offline activity. In fact, several solutions providers have, to their credit, taken the trouble to build offline capabilities into their offerings, but that's another column.

RECENT ANNOUNCEMENTS

• Aether Systems and Neomar, a provider of enterprise wireless management and delivery software, announced a partnership to provide a new service to securely extend information and applications from behind the corporate firewall to any wireless handheld across any wireless network.
  
• Broadbeam unveiled Axio, the third-generation of its wireless software platform. The Axio wireless software platform supports three modes of wireless communication: real-time, interactive communication or browsing; offline operation using store-and-forward message queuing; and notifications.
  
• Everypath announced the availability of Everypath Release 3.0. Intended for large enterprises, carriers, and wireless application service providers, the release incorporates additional functionality that enables employees, partners, and customers to conduct business anytime, anywhere, using virtually any mobile device.
  
• Infowave Software announced general availability of the Infowave Open Application Connector, which is designed to make accessing data that resides in client server and legacy applications possible with minimal development effort. For the first time, Infowave's network intelligent middleware, Infowave AirPower, is made available for third parties to leverage through the Infowave Open Application Connector.
  
• Sybase has partnered with Svenska PA System AB of Sweden, which has embedded the Sybase EAServer into its human resource management software, called POL personalsystem (Personnel Management System). With EAServer, Svenska PA System has Web-enabled their software so customers can manage human resource information over a secure Internet connection.

A FAMILIAR TREND
The emergence of wireless-enabled enterprise applications demonstrates another in a string of communications solutions that first generated a buzz in the consumer space, but then eventually enhanced enterprise processes. An early example is the personal computer, which defined a path from would-be rebel to fully appropriated element of enterprise infrastructure, supplanting the mainframe. Similarly, Internet or packet-based telephony started out as a hobbyist's plaything, a way for individual technical enthusiasts to evade long-distance calls, and now Internet telephony or LAN telephony platforms are poised to overtake the venerable PBX. And wireless telephony has already insinuated itself so fully into daily life that it seems futile to distinguish between individual and corporate use, especially since follow-me applications can easily cross the divide from either direction. And now handheld computers add yet another example of consumer enthusiasm presaging a round of innovation in corporate communications infrastructure. Already, corporations are reimbursing many individual PDA purchases, that is, when corporations don't buy the devices outright.

The benefits for corporations are fairly clear. Corporations may enhance the value of existing applications by making them accessible to mobile workers. And mobile workers who are granted access to corporate resources may become more productive, participating in corporate information and transaction processes in real time (or in quasi-real-time, in the case with store-and-forward exchanges). Over the next two to three years, many corporations -- nearly half, according to the META Group -- will wireless-enable applications.

To wireless-enable enterprise applications, it will be necessary to overcome many integration challenges. Granted, these integration issues may not be glamorous, but they promise to deliver real, particularized utility. That is, integrated applications will enable communications flows particular to the needs of individual corporations, as opposed to consumer-grade applications, which typically deliver content of general interest. Accordingly, when evaluating enterprise applications, it may be more appropriate to resist the glamour of the client devices, and instead focus on middleware issues.

[ Return To The September 2001 Table Of Contents ]