Specifically, corporations are letting a new breed of company - the wireless application service provider (WASP) - navigate still rocky wireless terrain.
Industry experts caution that wireless technology is dangerously overhyped and rife with technological pitfalls ranging from a lack of standards to low bandwidth, but they say WASPs make deployment a far more financially and operationally viable undertaking.
"I don't know if there's anything that's been more overhyped than wireless in the past few years, but WASPs provide a skill set that is hard to come by," says Dennis Gaughan, a research director at AMR Research in Boston.
Information technology (IT) managers who have used these new communication services say they make it possible to take advantage of the potential of wireless without taking on so many of the risks. John Klopp, president of Pacific Mechanical Service, commercial air conditioning installer with 27 employees, is nothing but happy he found FieldCentrix WASP.
FieldCentrix provides applications for field service employees in various industries. The company hosts an application designed specifically for the industrial air conditioning industry that Klopp estimates would have cost Pacific Mechanical more than US$100,000 to build.
"I really liked the FieldCentrix software, but the question was 'Could we afford it?'" Klopp recalls. "At the time, FieldCentrix was just rolling out their hosted model and I said, 'Send me a contract.' "
Pacific Mechanical now pays only $400 per month per technician for the application, which includes deployment and support costs. Klopp says the technology has been "amazingly dependable" with excellent connection reliability.
The wireless application, accessed with an Itronix 5200 handheld computer - a proprietary device about half the size of a laptop - replaces paper-based maintenance contracts and service call records, as well as mobile phone dispatch and communications.
Klopp says the wireless application saves time and money and makes Pacific Mechanical's customer service far more effective.
"It's a huge leap forward for us," he says.
