Go the Extra Mile with Mobile Applications

Introduction This year marks the 50th anniversary of one of the greatest athletic achievements in human history: the running of a mile in less than four minutes by a 25-year-old British medical student named Roger Bannister. Previously considered impossible, Bannister’s feat is often cited as an example of determination and the human spirit. What isn’t often spoken of is the aftershock of that achievement. The pace of distance racing was permanently quickened for anyone and everyone who came afterward. It was no longer competitive to run a mile in 4:15, 4:05, or even 4:00.01. Once the four-minute mark was broken, the pace of milers — and even racers in similar events — was set forever. Technology has done much the same in business. Up until the mid-1970s, when one business sent an important document to another in a different location, the expectation was it would take anywhere from a couple to several days to arrive. Then came Federal Express, and suddenly the bar was raised to overnight. In the 80s, fax technology meant documents could move from one location to another in minutes. Fast forward to the 90s, e-mail – the bane and boom of corporate America – set the bar higher yet again. Still, as technology has taken over the corporate office it seems that mobile workers are getting further and further behind. Like the milers who peaked at 4:05, mobile workers are faster than the pack but are not leading the field. So, why hasn’t the state of mobile technology allowed remote workers to keep pace with the rest of the corporate world? One certain factor is the general uncertainty of where mobile technology is headed. As in any industry where competing standards are at work, buyers are reluctant to commit large sums of money to any one technology for fear they might select the wrong standard. To understand this dilemma, just ask anyone who chose Beta over VHS. There has been some convergence of cell phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs,) but what you wind up with most often is a good cell phone that makes a barely adequate PDA, or a great PDA that has marginal value as a cell phone. This makes it difficult for enterprises to determine how to outfit their mobile workforces. Further complicating matters is the utility of the various protocols. The Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) used with cell phones is fine for looking up a phone number or getting other small bits of data. But it is not optimal for pulling up detailed customer histories, particularly on ever-shrinking cell phone screens. Wi-Fi is better for more details, but despite growing popularityhas still not proliferated as rapidly as expected. This is a problem that must be solved, and solved soon. Technology research and advisory firm Gartner, Inc., predicts that by 2007, more than 66% of the U.S. workforce will be using mobile applications. They will need reliable access, both in terms of the connection system and the applications that run on them.