October 2011 //
Today’s CIOs face significantly more challenges than at any other time in history. Companies look to IT departments to boost worker productivity and simultaneously lower the cost of IT. The shift to pervasive mobility is a significant step that allows companies to achieve both goals. Historically, the shift to pervasive mobility has been difficult and expensive to implement, and as a result it was a reality for a very small number of organizations. However, a number of technology trends have come together to create a “perfect storm” effect, which will bring this vision to reality. These trends are:
- Proliferation of wireless devices: Just a few short years ago, wireless in the enterprise was limited to laptops and a few purpose-built devices for specific vertical industries. However, the past 24 months has seen an explosion in the number of wireless devices, which now includes laptops, tablets, smart phones, and vertical-specific devices such as medical devices and factory equipment. In fact, many of these devices have no wired interface, further increasing the demand for WLAN. As the number of wireless-enabled devices continues to grow, so does the importance of the wireless network. ZK Research forecasts that the number of mobile devices will grow to 1.62 billion in 2015, up from 1.2 billion at the end of 2010.