Wireless in the enterprise: requirements, solutions and research directions

Abstract

In the last few years, wireless networking has seen considerable interest among service providers, users, vendors and content developers. Significant advances have been made in devices, applications, middleware and networking infrastructure. With wireless becoming such a mainstream technology, there is a growing interest in increasing its usage in the enterprise environment. Before wireless solutions can be deployed widely, the requirements of the enterprise environment and capabilities and limitations of wireless technologies must be addressed. In this study, we analyse and discuss the enterprise requirements and how such requirements can be met by the current and emerging wireless infrastructure. In particular, the major requirements are dependability, security, coverage, ease-of-use, devices, network interoperability and cost. Some of these requirements are addressed in the paper, and we also present a dependable, secure and scalable solution for the emerging wireless enterprise. Since this is an emerging area, we present several possible approaches to conduct research in wireless enterprise.

Task-Technology Fit for Mobile Information Systems

“…Scholars have provided conceptual overviews of the industry value chain (Barnes 2002), identified development and research issues (Tarasewich, Nickerson and Warkentin 2002, Varshney, Malloy, Jain and Ahluwalia. 2002, Varshney and Vetter 2001, conceptualized business models for telecommunication services providers, devices and applications (Haaker et al 2004, Varshney andVetter 2001), identified strategies for system development (Kemper andWolf 2003, Krogstie et al 2004), and detailed development cost and infrastructure standards (Balasubramaniam et al 2001).…”

“…Based on the notion that mobile IS combine traditional computing functionality with interpersonal communication functionality (Balasubramaniam et al 2001, Krogstie et al 2004, Sarker and Wells 2003, Varshney et al 2002, we categorize mobile IS functionality according to two dimensions, namely (1) whether the main focus is on interpersonal interaction or on computing, and (2) whether the direction of the interaction between the user and the system is one-way or two-way interactive (reciprocal) (Balasubramaniam et al 2001). The resulting classification scheme includes four functionalities (Gebauer andShaw 2004, similar: Yuan and, as described and exemplified in Table 1.…”

“…Many researchers have stressed the importance of the user interface for the design of mobile IS (Balasubramaniam et al 2001, Barnes 2003, Chan, Fang, Brzezinski, Zhou, Xu, and Lam 2002, Krogstie et al 2004, Lee and Benbasat 2004, Siau et al 2001, Siau and Shen 2003, Smith et al 2002, Tarasewich 2003b, Tarasewich et al 2002, Varshney et al 2002, Varshney and Vetter 2001.…”

“…Ubiquity, allowing for the reaching of users anywhere and anytime as well as providing anywhere and anytime access to information resources, has been identified as a defining factor of mobile IS (Junglas and Watson 2003, Kemper and Wolf 2002, Kini and Thanarithiporn 2004, Siau et al 2001, Tarasewich et al 2002, Varshney et al 2002. The desirable situation of ubiquity, however, is often limited in several ways (Gebauer and Shaw 2004).…”

“…Chan et al (2002) and Siau et al (2001) suggested that wireless network connections typically provide less bandwidth and tend to be less stable and predictable than wired network connections. Kini and Thanarithiporn (2004) found access speed and availability drive the adoption of mobile commerce, while Balasubramaniam et al (2001) and Varshney et al (2002) found that network coverage and reliability impacted the usefulness and feasibility of mobile IS. Kim and Steinfield (2004) found that connection quality impact user satisfaction and continued intention to use mobile services.…”