Mobile

The future of enterprise networking is no more networks

At Burton Group’s Catalyst Conference, I chatted briefly with speaker Matt Lavallee about how the conference was going, and he asked me this question: “Have there been any surprises for you?”

In short, my answer was “yes.” But in long, if the title of this blog post is any indication, I was quite taken aback by what I heard from Burton Group senior analyst David Passmore in his first session on the “wireless everything” era.

When I spoke to Passmore last week in an interview on computer networking trends for 2009, I hadn’t quite realized that his future of networks meant the extinction of them.

In the first point of our interview Passmore stated, “Wireless is one [networking trend of ‘09] because there’s an increased use of mobile phones for both data as well as for voice. We’re also seeing enterprises using wireless LANs (WLANs) often as a substitute for wired Ethernet.” From these trends, he suggested that we would some day no longer need networks.

Consider this tongue-in-cheek dialogue between Passmore’s explanation of this at Catalyst and the audience’s reaction:

Passmore: For longer-term networking trends, we may actually see the disappearance of enterprise networks.

Audience: Blank, saucer-eyed staring

Passmore: You’re probably thinking, “How can that be?”

Audience: Those not nodding vehemently to his question are doing so internally, thinking “Yes, how can that be?”

Passmore: Well, we’re already seeing a shift from wired Ethernet access for the use of wireless LANs.

Audience: OK, but that’s still a network — hence the “n” in wireless “LAN”…

All kidding aside — what he meant was that Ethernet is very surely being replaced with wireless, which will then be replaced by 4G mobile cellular data. Does this seem probable? I think he has a valid point, but how soon will a transition like this occur? Will the network engineer have to move into wireless telecommunications in his lifetime? Who’s to say?

Wireless LAN spending is down, 802.11n spending is up

Market analyst firm Dell’Oro published a 1st quarter assessment of the wireless LAN market which showed that a severe 11% drop in enterprise spending from the 1st quarter of last year and a 15% drop from the 4th quarter of 2008.

Dell’Oro says Cisco’s huge share shrank a little, from 63.1% to 60% from a year earlier. HP ProCurve doubled its share from 1.7% to 3.1%, no doubt thanks to its acquisition of WLAN vendor Colubris. Aruba’s share is 8.1% and Motorola’s is 5.9%.

Despite the overall poor showing for WLAN, 802.11n technology sales grew 4% from the 4th quarter of last year, according to a report from PCWorld.  and 802.11n technology now makes up the majority of the WLAN sales for the first time ever.

Cisco’s domination in the wireless LAN market remains intact, but it’s interesting to see their share shrink just a little bit. In fact, looking at the numbers, the amount of market share Cisco lost equals ProCurve’s ENTIRE market share.

The WLAN market remains extremely crowded and some of the largest network infrastructure vendors not named Cisco (Brocade, Juniper) lack a true WLAN product line. I expect to see some more consolidation before the recession ends.

Overheard @ Interop NYC 2008: When high fashion and high tech collide

Vendor A: “Busy enough for you?”
Vendor B: “Packed in here.”
–Two empty vendor booths

There’s nothing quite like Vegas, I was told, right before tromping off to Interop New York, and boy were they right. No MacGyver. No high-stakes (or low-stakes, for that matter) poker with the stars. And really, not many announcements. As Rivka Little blogged, going there made you wonder if trade shows are dead, although the Fashion Coterie trade show right next door seemed to be booming (with better swag, too!).

Strangely, one of the biggest presences was RIM, pushing their PBX interoperability as well as showing off some shiny new Bolds. I have to admit, seeing them In Real Life really made me appreciate the upgrade in screen quality over their predecessors. We watched some movie trailers, and I was surprised that they were actually watchable as opposed to the almost farcical activity of watching video on a Curve.

RIM also had David Yach, their CTO of software, give an Interop keynote and lined him up for a series of interviews about the future and philosophy of BlackBerry software.

Cisco, it seems, isn’t quite so enthusiastic, as Rivka quoted one Cisco exec: “We don’t do these tradeshows the way we used to. Cisco does a lot of it virtually now. And we use our own technology like telepresence to meet with people. Folks are crunched to travel.”

And the ones that do make it there? Occasionally sidelined.

Security: What does your company make?
Cisco Executive: EVERYTHING.
–Outside Fashion Coterie trade show floor

The feelings, alas, were not mutual.

Clacker: Oh my God, we missed it!
Fashionista: What are you talking about?
Clacker (with growing horror): We missed the show! These guys are definitely not in fashion!
–Outside of Interop trade show floor

Further Reading:

• Interop Las Vegas 2008 Coverage, to remember the Interop that was.
• Telepresence vendors tout bigger, faster, better at Interop NYC, but is it worth it yet?
• Overheard in New York, the original and still the best.

Thanks to Rivka Little for the overheard tips! Got more? Send them in to mmorisy at techtarget

Arrgh! Acquisitions and attacks on the high (tech) seas

Ahoy! Just in time for our Talk like a Pirate Day blog post (what’s a weekend late among old salts?), we hear tales of treachery and triumph, of bold moves and dastardly deeds.

First, matey, is the tale of Cisco’s Jabber acquisition. Why would the world’s dominant networking gear provider buy a second-tier IM platform? While you may not actually know anyone who uses Jabber, the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) Jabber is based on has seen quite a few fans, not the least of which is Google which has embraced the protocol for its Google Talk instant messaging platform.

As Cisco continues to make good on their promise to put structure behind Web 2.0-type tools, Jabber is a good place to start: A widely accepted IM standard heartily approved by the geek crowd which also gives enterprises the control they want. And some are also seeing it as a shot against frenemies Google and Microsoft, like the National Business Review’s summary:

IM gains more respectability with the announcement over the weekend that networking giant Cisco will buy Jabber, whose software allows users of rival freebie IM programmes, such as Apple’s iChat, Google’s Talk, Microsoft Windows Messenger and Yahoo Messenger, to interact with each other, plus send messages to commercial grade programmes such as Microsoft’s Office Communications Server.

The article title was even more direct: Cisco guns for Google, Microsoft with Jabber buy.

On a more swashbuckling note, Aruba’s taking aim at Motorola, counter-suing the company for patent infringement:

“The first asserted patent was assumed by Aruba in March 2008 as part of its acquisition of AirWave Wireless Inc., while the second asserted patent was issued to Aruba in May 2008,” the company said, adding that it is seeking a permanent injunction against use of its patented technologies as well as monetary damages.

The WLAN market is treacherous waters, as we’ve reported before, so we don’t expect this back and forth end until one or the other goes to Davy Jones locker.

Image: SearchNetworking’s belated Talk like a Pirate Day cake.

Is pervasive mobility perverse?

In my last post I quoted a description of a phone from Craig Raine’s poem “A Martian Sends A Postcard Home:”

“In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps,
that snores when you pick it up.

If the ghost cries, they carry it
to their lips and soothe it to sleep

with sounds. And yet, they wake it up
deliberately, by tickling with a finger.”

Who knew that the end of my last post would be a prelude to my time at Burton Group Catalyst Conference last June. I ended up unknowingly booking at a haunted hotel! (”In [hotels] a haunted [Tessa] sleeps…”)

And I’m not one to believe in ghosts, but the Travel Channel, hotel maids and several newspapers insist there is a presence of an other-worldly being at The Horton Grand Hotel — in the room next to where I stayed.

Though I didn’t end up seeing the so-called “roger the lodger” (the name of the mostly-friendly ghost), the other form of ghosts (described in the poem) did a bit of their own haunting…

 The reason why was made clear to me after I attended the “Do I Really Want to Be Anywhere at Anytime?“ session, presented by Burton Group Executive Strategist Jack Santos.

Santos said “You can work from anywhere on earth and you can access just about anywhere on earth, [but] there are implications that go along with that.”

The implications were listed in Santos’ consequences of pervasive mobility: The first one being “the organization effect” where instead of individual knowledge we now have the ability to share knowledge across a group; knowledge is easily transferred from the individual to an organization. The second consequence was “message bloating:” One thought suddenly spawns many messages. Then came what Santos called “royalty syndrome:” Once a client or manager had your number they could call you at any time to ask you to work for them now. The last notable consequence was “total serfdom.” Santos said that “people have to have their devices.”

The last two consequences of mobility I find particularly vicious: If you have to have your device, then you consequently have to receive calls from your boss asking you to work for them then, which means you’re never fully away from work.

There were, of course, positives to having pervasive mobility. For instance, Santos said “there’s remote-ability, accessibility … and the ability to extend organizations,” which can not only save organizations, but also save individuals commuting fees.

Do these positives outweigh the negatives, though? In this information age, we are experiencing information overload — which is almost as bad as no information at all.

Worse still is the idea that “we’re leashed on a wireless leash,” said Santos.

This concept of a “wireless leash” is something even the general public feels the weight of. Take Jonathan Clare, for instance in his blog post on humans complicating their lives with technology:

“Cell phones are probably the most handiest and intrusive technology today. They are life savers when you need them, and they create stress when you don’t. You are always reachable… always. This leaves little space for privacy.”

What’s really unnerving is that people attached to their devices and computers all day and night are finding normal conversation difficult. “Live talk — conversation between real people — is awkward,” says Santos.

I can attest to this in my own experience when I work for prolonged periods of time by myself in my home office. I often find verbalizing thoughts extremely challenging. And human interaction isn’t made any easier when you realize it’s not acceptable to hold up a sign that says “BRB” — you have to figure out how to express your need to leave a conversation momentarily in a tactful manner. After a while you begin to forget what tact and acceptable exchange is.

I remember a person who would start a conversation, and midway through — without warning, excuse or farewell — would simply walk away. He did this with everyone he spoke to.

That loss of tact and respect was something Santos saw as a consequence of pervasive mobility: “We need to define a work in this culture of civility and respect … we’re losing these things.”

So how can we do this? Santos suggested we switch from pervasive mobility to pervasive civility. “Let’s not forget the human element,” he said. My personal suggestion is to start talking to people in the cubicle or desk next to you. Not IM — or, god forbid, text.

In Santos’ session synopsis he wrote: “Hammers will be given out at the end of the talk to destroy Blackberries, iPhones, and other mind-threatening paraphernalia that is ending life as we know it.” 

They weren’t given out, but we were strongly urged through a march-like mantra to “turn off your mobile phones!” “turn off your devices!” “go to places where you don’t have service on the weekend.” — which was a tune I happily marched to, and have no qualms about singing now.

Open mobile devices get the most market penetration

To be a player in the mobile device or network appliance game, having an open platform is a must, according to MLB.com CEO Robert Bowman at the Mobile & Wireless World conference keynote last week.

In a closed device platform, content providers have to go through a carrier to get to the pipe to get to their consumers. In an open device platform, the content providers go straight to the pipe which goes to their consumers — and this eliminates the middle man.

Take the two most popular enterprise and consumer devices right now: the BlackBerry and the iPhone. It’s not a mistake that they’re popular. Bowman explained that the “iPhone and BlackBerry are considered the most open devices,” and that plays a factor in which devices will live longer.

In addition to a longer shelf-life, these devices also have the potential for greater market penetration in coming years. According to Bowman, by 2013, 3G phone penetration will rise from 9% to 27% in the U.S.

Along with this, average revenue per user (ARPU) for data will rise 21% to 75% in the next five years — so after your kid graduates high school, you’ll no longer be talking on your device; texting will take over the majority of your communication.

As mobile devices grow stronger in their coverage and market share, they’ll grow proportionately in the stronghold of our lives.

“How many times do you think you will look at this device?” Bowman asked, holding up a gleaming BlackBerry to his audience. It’s shiny; it’s aesthetically pleasing…

“It’s like your watch,” he explains: It will catch your eye, so you’ll look down at it. You’ll be bored, so you’ll look down at it. When someone asks you what time it is, you’ll have to look back down at it even though you’ve just looked at it because you didn’t think to read it…and this is how it will be with your BlackBerry he says.

The BlackBerry will be something you will look at 500 times a day,” Bowman calculated.

Think of all that face value time you’ll have with your device! I can only imagine what Craig Raine (author of “A Martian Sends A Postcard Home“) would have to say about our phones now:

“In homes [briefcases?], a haunted apparatus sleeps,
that snores [lights up??] when you pick it up.

If the ghost cries, they carry it
to their lips and soothe it to sleep

with sounds. And yet, they wake it up
deliberately, by tickling with a finger. “

Data to be favored over voice: Youth will alter communication technology

The enterprise must prepare for the ‘millenials,’ or Generation Y as they are often known, according to a report from 60 Minutes. This was a theme echoed by President and Chief Executive Officer of Advanced Media LP at MLB.com (the Major League Baseball website) Robert Bowman in his keynote speech at Computer World’s 2008 Mobile & Wireless World conference on Monday.

He began the topic by presenting a statistic gathered by Chetan Sharma Consulting: Only 20% average revenue per user (ARPU) come from data plans on users’ phones.

“Right now, people are still reluctant to move to data plans,” Bowman said. But he suspects that the 20% ARPU will switch completely five or so years down the road; instead only 20% ARPU will come from voice and the remaining 80% ARPU will come from data.

As anyone knows, data plans are much more expensive than straight voice plans, so why is he so certain these statistics will swap? According to Nielsen NetRatings, broadband held only 8% ARPU in 2000 compared with 92% ARPU of narrowband users. Eight years later, 87% of users choose broadband over narrowband — and the reason? You get to have more faster; the ease of use and what users expect to own far outweigh the additional cost of broadband. The same, Bowman says, can be expected for people to switch from voice to data.

Still need more convincing? As a representative of the current 20%, Bowman explained why data was more important than voice: Anyone who knows him, he said, will know that if they have something urgent to say, they will send him a text message so that he can see it immediately. This cuts out an extra step of having to call his voice mail and listen to a message. Anyone who leaves him a voice mail knows that they will just have to wait.

The fact also remains that for younger generations, text is and has been the preferred method of messaging. Take his own teenage children for example, as Bowman did in his keynote: “Everyone who has a kid knows how they use a phone; it’s all data… My daughter only used her phone [for voice] to call us to pick her up.”

Even in the Developing a Global Wireless Infrastructure session today, Vice President of Information Services at UPS Mark Hillbush said that his daughter only had one contact in her phone for voice. “One contact,” he said “in two years! The sad part was that I don’t even think I was the contact in her phone.”

This goes to show, Bowman said, that the way children consume data and get entertainment is completely different than adults generations above them. The way they communicate using technology will evolve new applications, new devices and change the way we work in the world.

In my mind, what the enterprise has to prepare for are rapid advancements in technology. If you think new devices weren’t being created rapidly enough, I believe having Generation Y enter the workforce will zoom technology up the quadratic curve.

The NBA Finals and Lenovo

Last week I took a “tech tour” of Boston’s TD BankNorth Garden, home of the Boston Celtics. The tour, which took place hours before Game 1 of the 2008 NBA Finals, demonstrated how the NBA uses Lenovo tablet laptops to tracks statistics and scores during games.

Aside from the tour, Lenovo also provided me with a press pass that allowed me to stick for the game. So full disclosure here: I got to see a very exciting basketaball game for taking this tour. The story I wrote about how the NBA uses Lenovo’s laptops can be found on SearchMobileComputing.com.

Watching the Celtics and the Lakers in the NBA Finals was a great privilege. It was definitely one of the most exciting experiences I’ve ever had. But I did do some work while I was at the Garden. Really I did!

I shot some video of the demonstrations the NBA and the Celtics put on for me and other IT journalists. I thought I’d share them with you here.

Here we have Stephen Hellmuth, NBA executive vice president for operations and technology, giving an overview of what his team does on technology side to support NBA games.

Here is Jay Wessel, vice president of technology for the Boston Celtics, describing how wireless technology helps the NBA keep the game clock more accurate.

And finally, here is Wessel talking about how the NBA uses Lenovo laptops to keep score and log statistics.

iPhone SDK, enterprise features: Nice, but not enough

Let me just say, I have no horse in this race. I’m no BlackBerry crackhead and I’m no iPhone fan boy. When Apple announced its iPhone enterprise play last week, I started working the phones. My plan was to talk to a handful of analysts and put together a reaction story about the news. I figured I’d find experts on both sides of the fence. But just about everyone I talked to had his doubts about the announcement. Some of them welcomed the software development kit (SDK), the Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync support and the Cisco IPsec VPN client as good first steps, but all of them said that the iPhone still has some major barriers to break through before it can win acceptance as an enterprise smartphone.

So my story on the iPhone’s enterprise features ended up being something of a counterpoint to the blog post that Amy Kucharik wrote in this space on Friday. In her tour through the blogosphere she found several experts who were more sanguine about the iPhone announcement.

In the reporting I did for my story, I found that analysts still had strong reservations about the iPhone as an enterprise smartphone. There are still some issues that have dogged the iPhone from the beginning, such as the single-carrier agreement with AT&T, the touchscreen keyboard that many QWERTY devotees reject, and the iPhone’s heritage as entertainment device.

Some of the analysts I talked to also had doubts about whether the SDK release would promote the development of many enterprise applications. Many third-party developers will likely go after the more lucrative consumer market instead. Others pointed out that ActiveSync support hasn’t helped other smartphones make much of a dent in the BlackBerry’s dominance of the push email space — so why should the iPhone be any different?

There’s no question that these announcements make it easier for iPhone owners to use their devices on the job. That is a big deal. So all this leaves me wondering, is this announcement aimed at convincing IT executives to deploy or support the iPhone in their companies? Or, is this announcement really about convincing consumers that they can use their iPhones on the job? My guess is, it’s the latter.

iPhone targets the enterprise with new apps, Cisco VPN client

The iPhone was already doing a pretty good job creeping into the enterprise, despite early concerns about its security and manageability. Now, Apple is taking steps to allay those fears; yesterday, the company unveiled new features designed to help the iPhone better fit into the enterprise.

Early critics of the iPhone disliked its closed OS, which prevented third-party developers from creating new applications for the device. This limited the ways the phone could access corporate applications, most prominently, “push” email.

Now, Apple intends to open its software development kit by June, enabling the development of enterprise-worthy applications.

Jason Brooks speculates in his eWeek blog that the new apps will give the iPhone a leg up over RIM and Palm:

I expect that Treos will begin to wither in the eyes of one-time loyalists, and that erstwhile thumb-keyboard addicts will start to judge their BlackBerrys to be significantly sourer.

That’s good news for Apple fans; what’s perhaps even better news for network people is the integration of Cisco’s VPN client software. According to Network World blogger Jamey Hearey:

This will be a full blown IPSEC client that will even support the use of certificates or password based multi-factor authentication. Very nice! The iPhone VPN client will be able to connect to Cisco VPN gateway devices, like the Cisco ASA and older Cisco PIX.

Hearey, a security consulting systems engineer at Cisco, also points out that Apple announced its plans to support WPA with 802.1x authentication. “This will enable more enterprises to allow the iPhone to connect securely to their wireless infrastructure,” Hearey wrote.

Apple also opened an iPhone Enterprise Beta Program, through which enterprise developers can play with the 2.0 code before the official launch later this year. Check out Apple’s “iPhone Enterprise” page to read more about the program or view video of Steve Jobs making the announcement:
http://www.apple.com/iphone/enterprise/

It seems that the iPhone is unstoppable. Unfortunately, I won’t have one until they give them to you free with a three-year, $35/month service contract.