| Wireless networking is all about freedom. Freedom is a worthy goal in its own right, and freedom in an organizational context pays dividends.
It’s tremendously cool to be able to sit down in an office or conference room, open your portable computer, and have instant connectivity to the resources you need to do your job.With wireless networking in place, there’s no need to fiddle with Ethernet cables and the associated software settings — you just get on with whatever you want to do. Simple, mobile connectivity like this makes you more efficient and more capable.
Considered from a manager’s point of view, wireless networking is an empowering technology, a “force multiplier” if you want to use the military term.A given number of people, given a method of working more efficiently than usual, can do the work of a larger number of people.The fact that wireless networking enables people to connect to the network from anywhere in their work area, without any overhead, means that they can spend more time doing their jobs and not getting stressed out about hooking up to the network.
If you consider that wireless networking makes possible new modes of work, the advantages become even more apparent. Quite a few organizations are using wireless devices to scan items (for inventory management and tracking, to cite the two main examples) and report the scanned data to a central repository in near-real time.This makes more current—and therefore more valuable—information available to the people who need it.That wouldn’t be possible without wireless networking. A few shops are already experimenting with wireless telephone service, in which users can roam all over their workplace while maintaining connectivity to the organizational telephone switch via a portable handset.This means they can be reached at their usual phone extension wherever they go, with no need to configure forwarding.The next generation of such portable phones will be able to connect to the wireless LAN when a suitable one is available, and switch over to the public cellular network when the user goes out of range.Wireless networking is not a gimmick. It is a productivity-enhancing, profit-enhancing infrastructure element that makes businesses stronger. |
