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The five biggest worries about mobile data

When companies consider rolling out mobile-data applications, several issues always come up that strike fear in the hearts of CIOs, who don’t want to make major investments in an emerging technology that later proves to be unreliable, insecure or proprietary.

When companies consider rolling out mobile-data applications, several issues always come up that strike fear in the hearts of CIOs, who don’t want to make major investments in an emerging technology that later proves to be unreliable, insecure or proprietary.

Worry No. 1: Performance

What’s the point of buying high-speed wireless data services for your employees if the network doesn’t reach your branch offices or customers? That’s why one of the first questions that network executives ask is about coverage and speed.

"If you have great speed but you’re in four markets, then enterprises don’t want that," says Tim Donahue, vice president of business marketing for Sprint Nextel. "They want ubiquity. At 80% of the U.S. population, you are definitely there. Then you can add on the remaining locations. Enterprises want to know that wherever they are, you are there."

Wireless access has to be not only available and fast but also reliable -- not necessarily the 99.999% reliability that companies have come to expect from traditional wired networks, but reliable enough for their applications.

"We’ve seen more emphasis on reliability for business users in the last six to 12 months," says Mike O’Malley, director of external marketing at Tellabs, which sells wireless data equipment to carriers. "This really raises the stakes for the carriers. They have to make sure they have coverage -- not just in any building but in the canyons of LaSalle Street. They need to make sure that the call is not going to be dropped because it’s being used for very important, time-sensitive information and financial transactions."

Carriers say the best way for companies to determine whether a wireless data service performs well enough for their applications is to test it. "We tell CIOs to trial EV-DO for 30 to 60 days and then make a determination," Donahue says.

Wireless network performance is becoming more important to enterprise customers as they move beyond e-mail to more critical business applications such as real-time ordering and inventory management.

CIOs care about "the level of service that the mobile operator can provide in resolving potential issues that will arise in terms of application performance delivery," says Jim Vale, product manager at Network General, which sells sniffers and other network management devices to wireless carriers to help them isolate problems on their networks. "As data is pushed out to the mobile service offering, the enterprise really has very little or no visibility into that last mile. And it’s a very long mile."

Worry No. 2: Security

Given the publicity surrounding compromised customer data caused by lost or stolen laptops, CIOs are rightfully worried about managing a fleet of mobile devices.

That’s why there's growing interest in managed security services from wireless carriers that include dealing with lost or stolen devices, as well as repair and replacement of broken devices.

"There’s amazing growth in the use of laptops in corporations," says Jim Szafranski, vice president of product management and marketing at Fiberlink Communications, which sells remote access software. "Corporations do want to provide easy connectivity for their users . . . but the concern is that the laptop is harder to secure. IDC has a statistic that 60% of all corporate data is on laptops today. So that’s a worry."

Companies also want to make sure mobile devices follow security policies related to logging on, antivirus protection, firewalls and software patches before they are given remote access to corporate networks. Either alone or through partners, wireless carriers are offering software or hardware for mobile devices that do security policy checking.

Many companies are using EV-DO or other 3G services, as well as Wi-Fi -- depending on which wireless service is faster or cheaper at a particular location. Companies are buying remote access software for laptops that works with any of these wireless services and provides an easy-to-use interface and security policy checking.

"Our customers are telling us that 3G and Wi-Fi are really complementary technologies," says Piero DePaoli, director of global product marketing at iPass. "3G is what they use in the big cities, but if they have Wi-Fi at the hotel, they may get better performance in-building with Wi-Fi. Almost everybody’s corporate campus or office is putting in Wi-Fi service."

Hardware solutions also are available. Gemalto, for example, provides smart cards that let wireless operators, corporations and government agencies provide secure logon to network data from cell phones and other mobile devices using tokens.

"What we’re looking at for enterprises to have larger adoption of EV-DO and 3G is how they can build a security environment that’s common for everybody," says Jean-Louis Carrara, vice president of marketing solutions and strategies for Gemalto. "Whatever the brand of your phone, whatever the mode of your phone, you would have a [Subscriber Identity Module] card in it and you would put the security on the SIM card. As you change devices every 18 months, you keep the SIM card with you so you still have security. Phones are getting better and better. Employees want to change phones so they can take advantage of new services, higher speeds and all the new multimedia rendering capabilities."

Worry No. 3: International roaming fees

Imagine racking up a $2,500 bill for network access on a business trip to Europe. That’s what happened recently to a U.S. executive who spent a few weeks visiting customers in Europe. Horror stories like these are driving corporations to adopt global wireless data cards from carriers.

"In Europe, the roaming fees are amazing," Sprint's Donahue says. "You can spend $60 a month, and you can use your laptop in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York. In Europe, you can’t travel 100 miles without incurring a $100 fee. . . . It doesn’t matter who you go with: Vodafone, Orange, Sprint, AT&T or Verizon. You can’t get away from the roaming fees in those countries."

That’s one reason companies are buying remote-access solutions that support multiple technologies including mobile data and Wi-Fi. Laptop users can choose the most affordable network access for each country.

"As users travel around the globe, the roaming fees for 3G data are more astronomical than the voice fees," iPass's DePaoli says. "You don’t dream of using your cell phone when you travel to Europe. That’s when other connectivity options like Wi-Fi really make sense."

Corporations can buy an unlimited mobile data card from a carrier for a particular country, or a more expensive global data card for executives who travel to many countries overseas. The U.S. card might cost $60 a month, while the global card might cost $160 a month. Although it is more expensive, the global card is less expensive than racking up roaming fees.

"There are two different approaches to this problem," says Greg DeMarco, director of business development for mobility solutions in the Americas for Orange Business Services. "You can source cards locally for the bulk of the employees who are mobile within a country. The other approach is for the high-end travelers. You get them one global card and that gives you a predictable but higher cost."

Worry No. 4: Standardization

Companies are moving toward standardization for mobile devices, but the rapid pace of technological change makes this goal difficult to achieve.

Most enterprises consolidate their laptop purchases and standardize on particular models and configurations. A growing number of companies standardize on particular handhelds, too, such as BlackBerries. But companies are still supporting a range of cell phone devices. Increasingly, companies are trying to adopt standard EV-DO or 3G cards for these cell phones.

One issue that makes standardization hard is how fast cellular technology is changing. By the time an IT department issues an RFP and chooses a configuration, it’s outdated. "It’s a challenge keeping up with the technology," iPass's DePaoli says. "The second you buy one of these 3G cards, there’s a better technology coming out. That’s the frustrating part for an organization. They get sold by the vision of a carrier, but then they get locked into a two-year contract."

The benefits of standardization include volume discounts for devices and lower help-desk support costs for common devices.

"The key thing that has slowed the growth of 3G a little bit is that 3G cards are always tied to carriers," DePaoli says. "You’ve got a three- to four-year lease cycle with your laptops. You don’t want to embed a wireless card, which you’re changing out every 12 to 18 months. So most people are using PCMCIA cards."

Another benefit of standardization is "simplification," Orange Business Services' DeMarco says. "For a global multinational, with offices and employees on the street in multiple countries, it becomes cumbersome and complex for the enterprise to go out and develop contracts and relationships with individual providers in each country to source mobile data cards."

It’s still an outstanding question in the industry whether 3G cards will end up embedded in laptops and other mobile devices as has happened with Wi-Fi.

Fiberlink’s Szafranski sees a shift toward USB-based 3G cards rather than PCMCIA cards. "The USB form factor seems to be working well as corporations are getting more and more users onto wide-area wireless," he says.

Still, what corporate customers want most is standard 3G cards that work in any country regardless of carrier. "You can standardize on a regional level, but everyone is looking for a global solution," Szafranski says. "The opportunity for Fiberlink is that whether the regions are different or the networks are different, the end users’ screen looks the same. The security overlay, the compliance overlay -- all works the same."

Worry No. 5: Cost

As prices of EV-DO and other 3G technologies have dropped, cost has become less of a concern for CIOs. Many of them still limit the number of employees that qualify for laptops and mobile data cards, however.

When EV-DO was introduced two or three years ago, it cost around $80 a month. Now it costs around $60 a month. "Cost is usually one of the first hurdles, but the pricing has come down," Fiberlink's Szafranski says. "The cost hurdle has largely been passed."

Mobile data is still "expensive compared to Wi-Fi," Orange Business Services' DeMarco admits. "You can get unlimited public Wi-Fi and Internet dial-up service for $20 a month per user. If you have unlimited [Code Division Multiple Access] or EV-DO service in the U.S., it’s $50 to $60 a month."

Even more expensive are global data cards. "If you have a high traveling employee that might pay $5 a megabyte for roaming out of their market, you can get them a global plan for $160 a month flat-rate and up to 100 megabytes of data outside their domestic market," DeMarco says.

InStat estimates that EV-DO costs will drop to $40 a month over the next few years. If that’s true, it will be easier for CIOs to prove the ROI of mobile data.

One important factor for CIOs is getting a true estimate of how much money they are spending on wireless data. "We’re trying to work with our customers on what’s the return for mobile data and how to build a business case for it," says Laura Johnson, executive director of enterprise solutions for AT&T’s wireless unit. "What happens if they don’t have a centralized data communications strategy? Then when users travel they are paying for Wi-Fi hot spots and hotel connectivity, and it all shows up on travel expenses. A lot of times companies don’t have a really good insight to what those costs are, and that’s a liability when they want to move to a more centralized strategy."