Taking business apps on the road . . . and accessing them wirelessly

Mobility-enabling the enterprise Making middleware mobile WLANs unleash apps Rethinking apps for wireless use

The truck driver makes a right turn while his partner uses his Intermec 760 wireless handheld to punch up data on their next delivery. Besides directions and order details, he finds a text note: "Beware of large dog." Calling the customer from his cell phone, he tells her the truck is just a few minutes away - and asks her to leash the dog.

Small details like these are adding up to a big competitive advantage for The Bekins Company's HomeDirectUSA division and its network of 75 independent delivery agents. With accurate address data and a real-time, two-way cellular data link, Bekins' new Service Tracking Automated and Routing System (STARS) is boosting efficiency by about 20% at Cardinal Transportation, says Gregg Bennett, president of this Richmond, Va., Bekins agent.

"That's a tremendous plus for us. The [traditional voice] communications between drivers, dispatchers and [route] planners is very time-consuming," says Bennett, who participates in a committee overseeing this Bekins project. The wireless data connection automates much of this, simplifying and speeding up these information exchanges.

Bekins expects STARS to smooth "final-mile" delivery processes such as picking up products and checking customer availability, says Randy Valentino, CTO at the Hillside, Ill., company. While at the agent's distribution center, the delivery team can tap into a wireless LAN (WLAN) to access routing and dispatch data on an enterprise server running Microsoft SQL Server. On the road, the delivery team uses a cellular data link to access order and shipping manifest data in an IBM DB2 database at Bekins' mainframe data center. And at delivery, handheld at the ready, drivers can confirm other services such as unpacking, setup and cleanup; note exceptions or returns; and take an electronic signature from the customer as proof of delivery.

STARS reflects the growing sophistication, affordability and simplicity of wireless technology. And it shows the growing willingness to use wireless for line-of-business applications, the lifeblood of business. As Valentino says of STARS, "This project was conceived as wireless from the start."

Mobility-enabling the enterprise

Indeed, network executives increasingly are making mobility a part of their new data center architectures. Like at Bekins, they're delivering applications to mobile workers, either pushing data out to them or collecting new data from them via WLAN or cellular data connections.

"Mobility is about bringing business applications out to the point of activity," says Jeremy Platt, national mobility practice director for Dimension Data, a systems integrator in Reston, Va. The point of activity might be in a truck or a customer's facility, or it might be within the company, such as wireless support for doctors at patient bedsides or for tech support staff servicing desktop PCs and network gear.

Willingness to push mobility and wireless-enable corporations comes with maturation of necessary technologies, Platt says. "You can create a much more stable environment for [wireless] users, and you don't have to worry so much about managing it," he says.