The TCO Advantages of a WLAN & WWAN Combination
Abstract: Over the last several years there has been a continuous growth in the number of mobile workers in the US and abroad. A variety of enterprise applications including email, customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and others are being deployed among mobile workers by businesses large and small to maximize competitiveness, increase customer responsiveness, reduce costs, and increase personal flexibility. Increasingly these applications, and their associated business processes, are dependent on the Internet, driving the demand for wireless Internet access to a frenzied level among mobile workers. Wireless Internet access via Wireless LAN (WLAN or Wi-Fi) hot spots has reached the mainstream market, largely in part to highly visible global campaigns by Intel and a multitude of public establishments embracing the technology. After a period of missed expectations, a choice of wide area cellular networks (WWAN) has recently reached center stage and now presents itself as a viable option for commercial wireless Internet access, while looming in the future is the promise of metropolitan wireless networking in the form of WiMax. In developing the most effective wireless Internet deployment strategy among a given mobile workforce, IntelliClear offers this white paper to: present the case for wireless Internet access; review the various wireless technologies to be considered; evaluate a total cost of ownership (TCO) analysis for WLAN and/or WWAN; outline the current strategies of the industry’s top PC OEMs for wireless Internet access; and present a key set of considerations to those thinking about a wireless Internet deployment. IntelliClear was commissioned by Sony Electronics Inc. to develop and publish this whitepaper. This whitepaper represents the views and opinions of IntelliClear without influence or bias to the views and opinions of any vendor or client.