The Five Stages Of Wireless

One of the best things a panel discussion can do is to get the mind working. I moderated a panel on wireless technologies and solution providers at Solution Provider XChange, and it got me thinking about how familiar all the confusion over wireless technology seems.

Mulling this over, I think I've distilled the process of wireless' evolution--and, in fact the evolution of every major technology--into a series of stages. You've probably heard of the five stages of mourning; I'd like to propose a more cheerful set of stages--the five stages of technology:

1. Hype
2. Confusion
3. Deployment
4. Gross Overuse
5. Real Functionality

Let's break it down:

Hype
Obviously, it's important to get word of coming products out to the public. However, when an important new technology starts inching toward introduction, you see a torrent of hyperbole, much of it bearing only a passing resemblance to reality. Vendors announce products that are months away from delivery, futurists postulate life-changing effects of the technology, and a buzz builds all out of proportion to what the buzz is about. Clearly, the past year or so has seen wireless going through this stage. One fellow reporter referred to her wireless assignment as "the press release beat," since that was about all she saw about the technology for months.

In the past, we saw similar "stage ones" for other technologies: Windows 95, client-server computing, thin clients, storage area networks. For us tasked with reporting on technology, this is also called "rampant cynicsm stage," and if that sentiment is adopted by potential customers, it can be very difficult for the technology to progress to the next stages.

Confusion
Here's the stage wireless is working through now. A menagerie of wireless transmission techniques and standards--802.11, WAP, Bluetooth and various broadband approaches--are out there tantalizing users, but solution providers are still grappling over which ones to invest their time, money and manpower behind. The simple answer is to use the best technology for the customer, but many pieces are still missing from the puzzle. Bluetooth's adoption has been slowed by chip costs, coverage areas and reception qualities are spotty in many areas, and radio frequency (RF) engineers are a scarce commodity.

We've survived this before, however. Operating systems, device connectors, storage formats and ERP applications are good examples of technologies that have buried the customer under an avalanche of competing options. A standard would be nice, but it rarely evolves this early on; instead, confusion is remedied later when the market demands it.

Deployment
This stage is often entered into before stage two is complete. In its best forms this is the stage where the giddiness of stage one and the angst of stage two gives way to action, and real business applications for technologies are implemented. For example, while mobile computing is still sputtering, wireless LANs are gaining significant momentum. Vertical markets that are ideal for mobile computing are being identified and solutions are being readied. And, most importantly, customers' expectations and demands are coming into alignment with reality.

A good comparison can be drawn with the Web, which was thoughy to be a B2C money mill two years ago. There's money to be made, but it took a painful year to show that it would be B2B business that paid off first. The wireless solution providers on our panel--especially Srinivas Chakravarthy of Cognizant Technology--pointed this out eloquently by illustrating the use of wireless for internal communications and for linking remote workers with their own internal systems. This is a far cry from the early predictions of consumers conducting "m-commerce" and utilizing their handhelds for an array of services. "Don't get me wrong," Chakravarthy said after the panel, "I think those things are coming. But we're going to have to do something we're not used to doing--we'll have to wait."

That's perhaps the hardest thing for us to do in this high-speed technology age, but for a sensible deployment of the right technology into the right markets at the right time, patience may become a key skill for success.

Gross Overuse
Unfortunately, the pendulum can swing too far. Technology can be applied in inappropriate ways, and understandably so. If you're too close to the installation, it can be difficult to see that a technology that succeeded spectacularly in one part of an enterprise is wholly unsuited for another part. Another symptom of this is the arrival of unintended consequences that offset the benefits the technology was implemented for in the first place. We've seen it in the past--the too-eager embrace of client/server and its resulting network management problems could be the poster child for this effect.

For wireless, this stage could be a tricky one for solution providers. NoWalls' president Doug Murray brought this up on our panel: some things work better for wireless than others, and you need to focus on the ones that will work best earliest. After that, however, it could get tricky. What if a customer demands a wireless application that's grossly impractical? Do you tell them no and risk his wrath, or say yes and risk his wrath after taking his money?

Undoubtedly, we'll see lots of the latter in the next year or so, and a lot of strange stories of pointless services or installations that have resulted in unused functions. Already, such obvious losers as wireless marketing are being suggested--sending ads to wireless device users as they pass a storefront is little more than wireless spam, and will meet with the same lack of enthusiasm from users.

We'll see lots of other weird applications where wireless won't work any better than existing solutions, where wireless is used for the novelty of the idea.

Real Functionality
When the impractical, overly expensive and user-unfriendly solutions die out, this phase is achieved. The key indicator that real functionality has arrived is when we stop talking about wireless as its own distinct, unique subset of the computing world and start treating it as just another weapon in the solution provider's arsenal.

How long will it be before we get through those stages to real, widespread functionality? Probably not long--the word among solution providers here is 12 to 24 months, if things continue apace. Customer demand and the rapid evolution of technology are driving vendors and solution providers alike to correct existing problems quickly. The challenge is to move as fast as your competitors while also realizing that a single misstep or poor decision could drop you to the back of the pack instantly.

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