* Wireless LANs buoyed by prospect of voice, other apps
For anyone still wondering, it’s official: wireless LAN technology has reached the mainstream of enterprise IT. Voice over WLANs can’t be far behind.
That’s the finding of Infonetics Research, which recently completed a study of 240 users’ plans for WLANs in North America.
Infonetics says that while security continues to be the top barrier to adoption of WLANs, companies feel they better understand the threats and have started to trust the security features that have been added to WLAN products in the last year. Still, Infonetics says vendors need to continue to address the perception that WLANs have security problems.
In the area of WLAN switches, real-time administration of access control showed up as the most important feature to the study’s respondents. That was followed by the ability to create and apply policies online. Infonetics says cross-subnet roaming support also got high ratings.
Interestingly, the report also looked at what WLANs are used for. E-mail and Web browsing topped the list of applications today, but the study indicated that enterprises’ core applications would rank in the near future. For instance, 49% of respondents said they would use mobile supply chain management and enterprise resource planning applications by 2006.
Voice over WLANs is only used by 8% of respondents today, but 27% of them said they would use the technology by August 2006. Among large organizations, the figure was 33%. Infonetics said that WLANs’ ability to carry voice helps to justify the investment in the technology.
I’d be interested in your thoughts about WLANs in enterprise settings in general and about voice over WLANs in particular. Drop me a line at mailto:jcaruso@nww.com
