Managing the Mobile Workforce

This major Open Group conference been convened to consider a key issue facing any organization with employees on the move: how to provide them with technology and business processes that will enable them better to do their jobs while protecting the information that forms one of the organization's key assets. 

The Mobile Vision - A Business Imperative

The conference was introduced by The Open Group's President and CEO, Allen Brown.

Welcome and Introduction

Allen Brown, President & CEO, The Open Group

Allen Brown began by welcoming the delegates to the conference, and by introducing the subject of 'Managing the Mobile Workforce'.

He described the evolution in the mobile market by two illustrations.  In the late 70's he had been working for an organization making portable data terminals for companies such as Chambourcy, who wanted to be able to print out invoices in their trucks.  The printers were installed, but it wasn't until the drivers were miles from home that it was discovered that the printers exhausted the trucks' batteries!  These days, by contrast, companies like Avis are producing printout directly from their mobile devices.  For Chambourcy, the real purpose had been to have less milk returned and thrown away.  For Avis, it's the more complex issue of making sure that the customer gets in and out quickly, that the transaction is concluded accurately and that subsequent problems don't arise.

These two examples illustrate a more general point: today mobile devices are much more capable, and the people using them have more complex demands.  In particular the solution to today's problems involves integrating data from all parts of the organization: the requirement is for all the information that the individual needs to do his/her job. 

These changes are matched by a more general change in business culture.  For thirty years, companies have been developing systems that reflect the need of a particular part of their organization; but increasingly people from different departments are working together in teams to solve specific problems.  The individuals have changed in order to work together, but the underlying information infrastructure has not: it does not permit the information they need to be presented and handled in the same integrated way.  Mobile workers are often the most important people in the organization, and mobility places demands on any organization's infrastructure.  

Best Wishes

Two speakers had been unable to attend because of illness: Michele McGough and Bill Hancock.  Allen expressed to them both the best wishes of the conference for a speedy recovery.

Future Business of Mobile

Professor Laurie Cuthbert, Head of Department of Electronic Engineering, Queen Mary College, University of London

Professor Cuthbert reminded the conference that events often defy prediction, and illustrated the fact by citing the estimates of projected attendance at London's Millennium Dome during 2001.  Each estimate was lower than the previous one, and the final result was that less than half of the numbers originally predicted were achieved.

He began his presentation by considering the requirements for supporting a mobile workforce:

• Access: most commonly, access still comes from “fixed” services: dial-up PSTN, hotel LAN connection and wireless LAN; also, increasingly from mobile services such as GSM / GPRS / 3G
• Security
• Easy to use authentication
• Performance: enough capacity, combined with a guaranteed Quality of Service.
• Value for money: high bit-rate connections ( » 56kbit/s)
• Available everywhere

He questioned whether the answer to these requirements is necessarily wireless technology.

The European Commission that predicted that by now we would be well into the adoption of 3G wireless telecommunications: mobile multimedia; high bit-rate connections, everywhere, to a small hand-held terminal that everybody would be using.  He doubted whether it would happen.

He then brought us to the current reality.  In the UK there are currently more mobile connections than fixed; over 70% of the population have mobile connections, almost all through pre-paid connections, and the people who do not have a mobile connection probably never will have.

Mobile revenues are growing, and are approaching the levels of fixed-line business.  However, things are changing: revenue per customer is falling, and so is the average revenue per minute.

This situation presents problems because as the network grows investment is required to maintain quality of service, and the point can be reached at which growth ceases to be profitable.  Operators need revenue not just from a mobile workforce but from the population at large.  So the question is whether new services can lead to increased profitability.  Professor Cuthbert cited the example of SMS, where the cost to the user is $875 per Mbyte, and Orange in the UK have just doubled the price of SMS.

This prompted the question: how suitable is mobile for data on the move:

• GSM: at 9.6kbit/s too slow for a mobile workforce.
• HSCSD: inefficient in terms of spectrum; 28.8kbit/s (only Orange offering in UK) too slow, but is cost-effective in the UK ($1.62 per megabyte), so long as roaming is not used ($25.20 per Mb to the US)
• GPRS: just emerging; promised widespread availability, but initial offering operates at only dial-up speeds. GPRS is not cheap, but a high-use connection is just about affordable ($2.52 per megabyte).

He then asked the question: what of 3G?  In the UK, licence costs are $32 billion, shared among 5 players.  With interest and infrastructure costs, that requires an income of around $2,000 per customer over the licence period.  So average revenue will have to go up, but it is not clear where it will come from - current thinking on “killer applications” is games, gambling and pornography.

Professor Cuthbert then turned to a consideration of whether wireless LAN is an alternative technology.  He pointed out that wireless LANS are definitely affordable, compared with GPRS, citing the following figures:

• GPRS
  • $39.50 monthly charge, 15Mbye free then $2.52/Mbyte
• Wireless LAN - using MobileStar as an examples:
  • Prepay:
    • $20/ $50 : 120 mins / 300 mins (16.6¢ / min) nationwide
  • Contract:
    • $59.95 / month unlimited minutes 
    • $15.95 / month 200 free mins then 10.0¢ / min
  • Pay as you go:
    • $2.95 for first 15 mins, then 20¢ per min

On the other hand, coverage is poor; wireless LANs exist in few places - hotels, airport lounges and coffee shops.

What we are going to see is a mix of technologies: fixed wire networks, wireless networks, and emerging 3G.  These have the potential for integration,  - tight coupling and seamless transition - so that as one walks out of the area of a wireless LAN the connection is  automatically switched to GPRS.  The technology to do this exists and is being developed further.

Another approach is loose coupling with the same authentication, just a different network operation, and in general Professor Cuthbert felt this to be a likely way forward.

This approach is supported by the CEO of VoiceStream Wireless, who recently highlighted the company's vision for providing wireless data access via an integrated GPRS/EDGE/802.11b service offering:

"By combining 802.11 and our existing GPRS service, customers will have access to the right technology at the right time. Whether they need to have constant e-mail access on the go or predictable access to large files on demand, VoiceStream will be able to meet customer needs with coverage where they want it and speed when they need it."

He concluded with the following summary: we are going to get broadband access over wireless, but in the mean time we will have to make to with a mixture of fixed and wireless access in order to get reasonable connectivity.

Questions:

Q How do you see the relationship between use of mobile devices for tailored rather than packaged applications

Cuthbert: If you want to get email you can get it on a PDA in all sorts of ways, but there are all sorts of usability issues - screen size, keyboard access, handwriting recognition, and it is difficult to see a future without lap-top-type devices.

Richard Paine (Boeing).  Service providers are taking realistic steps to make wireless LANs part of their infrastructure.  The MMF has for the last 2 years been developing a Sessions Management Architecture; there is an architecture and a framework for going between wireless LANs and GPRS.

Cuthbert: I can't see need to move seamlessly between a wireless LAN and a broadband network.

Paine: The problem is that applications can't cope with losing the connection.

Remote Working: New Opportunities through Emerging Technologies

Paul Barker, Managing Director, mBusiness, CMG
Jeremy Fry, Consultant, Radio Spectrum International

Paul Barker began this presentation by distinguishing between 

• a Mobile Worker: someone who spends more than 20% of time away from office or home, and
• a Telecommuter: someone who works from home for more than 1 day per week

and explaining that the presentation was to be focused on the mobile worker.

The problem of providing information for mobile worker is not a new one: in 1974 Clifford Stone of Silicon Snake Oil is quoted as saying: 'Tomorrow's businessman will have the information necessary to do his job, right at his fingertips, due to the growing acceptance of microfilm as the solution to the information explosion'

To illustrate the demand for mobile business solutions, Paul quoted from IDC: 'Corporations are no longer satisfied with solutions that are only available on fixed-wire devices.  They're looking to extend functionality on an increasing number of applications to an increasing assortment of mobile devices.

He defined mobile business as 'Business or consumer services, optimized for internet enabled mobile devices, which inform, entertain or transact over public or private mobile networks'.  This is a very large scope - and there are many services provided to meet the need, including finance, retail, travel, information, enterprise, and entertainment; of these, he explained that his presentation was concentrating on enterprise applications.

He agreed with Professor Cuthbert regarding the exaggerated presentation of the capability of mobile devices, but felt that the market had now reached the 'dip of realism' before reaching sustained growth in the future.

Although he felt that the dates were still overoptimistic, he still felt that within a few years mobile eCommerce users would outnumber fixed; two quotations accurately reflected future expectations:

• Mobile internet services in Europe will be worth over 76 billion euro by 2005 (Durlacher)
• Spending on mobile solutions will skyrocket from $1.4 billion in 2000 to almost $40 billion by 2005 (IDC)

Several forces are driving this expectation of growth:

• Behavioral factors such as users' - particularly the young's - experience of mobile phones and SMS.
• Commercial factors such as the opportunity provided by anytime, anywhere, information services.  Paul felt it to be important to recognize mobile as a complementary channel to fixed devices; it shouldn't be looked at in isolation.
• Technical factors such as the rapid development of phone and PDA technology, new and emerging languages and protocols such as GPRS, Bluetooth, Wireless LAN, SMS, VoiceXML, and so on.  On balance Paul expressed himself to be more optimistic than the previous speaker, although he recognized that there are issues such as getting data in and out, the battery life of PDAs, and so on; but he was optimistic about the usability of devices.  GPRS is important not just because of bandwidth but because it's always-on.  The big leap is from 2G to 2.5G, with 3G an useful evolution.  For the right application SMS, too, has enormous potential for, for example, corporate to employee communication.

Paul described Mobile Workforce efficiency as 'Enabling a business or public service to benefit from its people having the right information in the format they want, delivered in the way they want, when they want it and report back'.  In this definition he felt the last phrase - 'and report back' to be particularly important as one benefit of always-on technologies.

IDC expects the number of mobile workers to grow from 6.2 million in 2000 to more than 20.1 million in 2005 (Europe), and Paul supported this view.

Turning to the social and business triggers for mobility, Paul looked at some other trends that encourage use of mobile devices:

• Economic drivers - Increasing demands on employees, requiring greater flexibility and efficiency
• Improving people's quality of life - can mobility improve the work/life balance?
• Evolving work patterns - Increased mobility, and the need for greater efficiency when traveling
• Recruitment - the ability to recruit staff who do not necessarily live in the 'right' location, so mobility can broaden the catchment area for rare skills
• Familiarity - consumer take-up of mobile services means that people will expect the same tools at work as they have in their private lives
• A compelling driver is the productivity that comes simply from not needing to travel in order to access bandwidth or write a report.

Having said all that, there are many issues that need to be resolved:

• Many people have a wide range of a variety of PDAs often with corporate data: are they secure?  Are organizations in control of the proliferation of devices?
• Security: in the UK it is estimated 40 PDAs and 1000 phones are left in taxis per month; but there are benefits of ‘always on’ technology in ensuring that less data is lost if the device is broken, stolen or mislaid.

Paul quoted from two recent surveys:

• Enterprises that do not correctly identify the needs of mobile workers will decrease their productivity by at least 20 per cent, according to Gartner Group
• Without the necessary technology 39 per cent said they struggle to keep track of messages when out of the office. Only 35 per cent of managers were offered smart phones or WAP phones and only 22 per cent were offered personal digital assistants (PDAs) by their companies. (ICL Management Survey)

The benefits of wireless-enabled workforce efficiency include the ability to use the right tool for the job; for instance, it is sometimes questionable whether for some situations a laptop is more effective than a fixed pc and a PDA.  Sometimes having two devices for different needs may be better than forcing the use of one device which meets neither very well.

In many industries providing mobile staff with up-to-date information can be a valuable differentiation in a competitive world.

Case Study

Jeremy Fry introduced some work that CMG did for the Radio Communications Agency; a UK Government Agency, part of the Department of Trade and Industry, which is responsible for managing the civil radio spectrum, and for licensing its use.

The Agency is also a member of the Government Secure Intranet (GSI), a hub from which all government agencies can talk to each other, and which by its nature precludes remote working that would bypasses its security measures.  Security in this case is controlled according to security restrictions issued by CESG, the UK government's national technical authority for information security/ information assurance issues.

Mobile working for the Agency had been going on since 1996.  Because of the regional nature of its work there was a need for more officers to work in remote regions than the Agency had offices, and therefore some officers had worked from home; this began with remote control of each officer's pc through the use of PCAnywhere.

CMG put in ISDN routers into homes, effectively to extend the WAN into the home; however when the Agency joined GSI, strong authentication was needed: however when this was installed, the one-time password could only authenticate one channel of the ISDN line, and there was not an adequate business case to upgrade the service.

The requirement was described as Mission Impossible: to produce a mobile solution that was fast, secure, resilient, cost effective, and CESG Approved.  Solutions examined were GSM (too slow), GPRS (insufficiently mature and very expensive) and HSCSD, the chosen option.

Speed was improved by the use of compression techniques and by implementing a service network to improve connection times.  Security in order to satisfy the requirements of CESG was achieved by continuing to use the strong authentication that was already in place.  Encryption (Blowfish) was not strictly required, but was used in order to allow the potential use of VPNs even for dialup.  However the CESG wanted the use of AES-128 so both were used.  Session management is used, and has the side-effect of reducing communication costs by allowing the connection to be easily broken and resumed.

Using AES-128 encryption, now can use internet VPNs.  Laptops have internet connections - opportunity to highjackers to access

Personal firewalls can be useful , but need policies to be pushed down to the workstation; also need attempted intrusion to be reported back.

The users' laptops, if they are connected to the internet, a personal firewall with which the policies are automatically downloaded, and in which attempted intrusion if reported back.  Once this is achieved it is hoped that CESG approval for the whole network will be forthcoming.

Conclusion

Paul Barker then summed up the lessons that had been learned.

To understand the possible Return on Investment you need to experiment

• Watch markets and technologies
• Create 'What if' scenarios
• Identify triggers and indicators
• Plan for threats and opportunities
• Fund pilot projects, feasibility studies and technology investigations

Take a very pragmatic approach to offering mobile solutions: the infrastructure is complex

Experiment to survive

Start small – i.e workshop to identify quick wins and scope a pilot providing

• A rapid, low cost entry point
• Experience of the mobile world
• Clearer understanding of requirements and opportunities
• Quick ROI

Mobility in Practice - the Pros and Cons: User Case Studies

Implementing Mobile Computing Solutions at Boeing Company

Chuck Stockton, Senior Program Manager for Mobile Computing, Enterprise Level, Boeing

Chuck Stockton began by introducing the Boeing Company and by describing how in 1996, several business and environmental factors gave rise to the need for global mobility; these included partnerships between vendors and suppliers throughout the world, and specifically the purchase of a division of the Rockwell company and the merger with McDonnell Douglas.  There was a need for practical measures to achieve a merger of the different cultures of the various companies, and the best way to achieve this was by communication.

At the same time there was a great deal of emphasis on work-life issues, and in order to attract and retain qualified people, there was a need to enable them to work from home.  Finally, about that time mobile devices and technology improved.

Boeing began by establishing some service goals.  The mobile computing effort should be:

• Simplified and Seamless
• Proactive and Preventative
• Tailored to User
• Assets both physical and informational, should Protected
• Compliance, for instance to US import/export regulations should assured

The project began by looking at end-user processes, specifically looking at their need to make travel arrangements.  They had to get permission to access Boeing information remotely, and there was a need to     protect data, so there was a need for encryption, authentication

The most important consideration was the end-user - how do they get the services and use them.

This started as a corporate initiative, with executive sponsorship.  This created a lot of focus on the effort, because if executives are tuned in to an activity everybody else falls in line.

The vision was 'anywhere, anytime connectivity to Boeing data', and the executives not only sponsored the approach but used it on a day-to-day basis.  The approach was managed in such a way that all the various organizations within Boeing and its partners were involved, and representatives meet at least once a month.  Discussions are reminiscent of a general practitioner doctor talking to a specialist.  The approach was to leverage the mature aspects of the technology and implement it with a holistic approach, considering the business processes and the support processes; also, to keep an eye on technology, but to make sure that everything that was sufficiently mature, and fitted in with the overall approach.

Overall successes included:

• Ubiquitous deployment of standardized mobile computing environment across sprawling campuses, and multiple domestic and international sites.  The project was able to leverage two major things
  • An existing world class internal data network
  • A mature Distributed computing environment
• There are now over 60,000 remote access users (out of 180,000 PC users)
• Mobile users include
  • 1500 International residents
  • 1000 International travelers
  • 18,500 domestic travelers
• For this, Boeing were awarded the Smithsonian Laureate for Computing Innovation

Chuck then went on to consider the individual factors that had contributed to this success

Boeing was early with VPN, strong authentication and personal firewall protection

For the occasional traveler (33%), when someone requested that a trip be booked, it triggered a number of processes, such as 

• a laptop tune-up to make sure that laptop worked effectively
• the paperwork providing documentation for import/export was initiated
• Also Boeing set up a worldwide Virtual Private Dialup Network, in order to reduce expenditure on international phone calls.

For the Campus Roamer (someone who goes from building to building - 21%), touchdown points were created such as a small desk or kiosk that had connectivity, a telephone service and plug in connections.  There was also a laptop service counter for repair and maintenance.

For Day-extenders (32%) and Telecommuters (6%) - people who want to work from home, special help desks were set up, which are spread across all time zones - not only to support travel, but shift working, and a standardized service was created to get services installed in homes.  The most difficult thing was dealing with local telephone companies, where networks were set up for voice services, and they didn't understand setting up digital services, so Boeing picked two vendors who were US-wide service providers, and they worked the issues with the local telephone companies.

Every month, an electronic newsletter 'Going Mobile' is sent to everyone who has an external account.  This gives useful information and keeps them in tune with what's happening in the mobile computing arena.

What worked?  Chuck outlined some of the key reasons for the success of the project.

• Build mobile computing triggers into the business processes that customers use
• Strong Executive sponsorship - that is still in place today
• The cross functional Service Management approach, providing mobile computing advocacy in technical and functional areas of the IT and non-IT business
• The holistic approach, managing the entire service from cradle to grave, with the synergy of multiple implementation and support projects
• Standardization - whenever possible.  It's not always possible, and not always the best thing, but it helps.
• And finally, education of the users: teach them how to use it, and keep it simple

He went on to highlight some practices to avoid:

• Don't assume users are computer savvy; they are typically experts in their own fields, not in computing.
• Don't always use leading edge technology; you have to understand leading edge technology, but use mature technology
• Don't assume your current support model is sufficient.  Users are often out of the “protected” environment of the corporate campus; new methods of self-help and self-healing need to be deployed, and support staff and help desk staff need specialized expertise 
• Don't leave all security implementations up to the security department; their expertise is in providing to protect the company assets; your focus should be on simplifying the use of the tools they provide, because if the tools are not simple they won't be used.

Chuck concluded by summarizing the hurdles ahead:

• Wireless security is inadequate and immature, and the 'work-arounds' that we have add complexity.
• The short lifecycle of technology hinders standardization efforts and raises costs.
• Managing customer expectations can be difficult because 'everywhere, all the time, computing, has not been achieved yet', and synchronization tools not yet equal to their desktop counterparts.
• Management of unlicensed radio frequencies.
• Work/life impacts are a matter of concern, because anytime/anywhere connectivity becomes everywhere/all-the-time, and there is a danger that users will become “too-connected”.

Questions

Walter Stahlecker (HP) asked about the impact of the program on overall IT expenditure

Chuck Stockton: This would be difficult to express in percentages or dollars, they were kept low because we had a group of 8-9 people specifically designated as mobile computer delegates who met once a month. The overall cost per user probably very minor because we made it easy to use and access and repair - that's how we got to 60000users.

Michele Rubenstein: How many people allowed to store data locally.

Chuck Stockton: People are allowed to store data locally but it has to be synched with enterprise server.

Re-engineering Business Processes through Mobility

Pat Brans, Solution Business Manager, HP

Pat Brans introduced his presentation by explaining that he intended 

• to review the Mobility Paradigm and what is driving it
• to consider two broad job categories and touch on some of their everyday tasks. 
• to take two specific industries and job functions and think about how they change with mobility
• to draw some conclusions.

He believed the Mobility Paradigm to be made possible by the integration of several types of technology:

• Wireless networks such as GSM CDMA TDMA and AMPS.
• Portable devices, with recent advances such as lithium polymer batteries and CPU's that are small, produce less heat and consume less power.
• New user interfaces such as handwriting recognition, on-screen keyboards, displays that can be read outdoors, and voice recognition.
• Enterprise applications such as Enterprise Resource Planning, Supply Chain Management, Knowledge Management, Customer Relationship Management, E-Mail and Personal Information Management.  Information from these applications needs to be integrated and made accessible in a way that it suitable for mobile workers.

In most companies there is a major emphasis on customer service and personal contact (in spite of the internet), and therefore a large number of workers spend time on the road.  The effectiveness of these individuals is limited for lack of information, and this is where mobile technologies can help.

Use Case 1: Pharmaceutical Sales Rep

Pat considered the work of a pharmaceutical sales rep, and described the tasks carried out in a typical day.  Typically the overall sales process made up of:

• Pre-call planning. This is carried out at several levels, but each day is dynamic and only high level planning is possible.  Often it is impractical to use laptops because of the time taken to boot up, their insecurity, size and weight.
• Customer-facing activities; the rep goes out and talks to doctors, leaves samples behind, and wants to collect a signature from the doctor.  He/she wants to give the doctor information on what's available and order brochures on products in which the doctor is interested.  Over the last 20 years the rep's time with the doctor has reduced from 20 minutes to, and reps are itching for mobile technology in order to improve their effectiveness.  Frequently the doctor is not available, and the rep wants to find an alternative call nearby.  If there is no alternative call, the rep will carry out administrative activities such as email.
• Post-call activities. The rep needs to make a report on what they did, documenting actions and future objectives.  
• Communications of key data to the rest of the company.  Now the rest of the company knows what happened - other reps need to know what happened because they are visiting the same doctors.

Mobile technology can improve all this in various ways:

• Pre-call planning is faster because there is better access to information
• Dead time is reduced because reps can more flexibly use fill in unplanned time by reading email, completing expense reports, and so on.
• Post call reports, and orders, sent out immediately, brochure orders go out quicker.
• Information is received more quickly by the company, so they can do better analysis.
• All planning can be done better because the mobile device offers a gateway to background applications
• Doctor-facing activities are improved because it is possible to schedule different visits

Pat went on to reflect on some points that arose from these considerations:

• Much of what has been described does not require real-time access - mostly information can be downloaded from a domestic PC.
• A small device is good - there is no boot time - laptops no good for sales people, and the device not obstructive when talking to a doctor.

Use Case 2: Field Technician

Pat described the work of a high-tech field technician.  Currently a technician is dispatched when a customer calls in with a problem, and the company sends a page to a field engineer.  The engineer calls the customer and tries to identify the problem and to arrange a call.  He orders parts from the warehouse and collects them, fixes the equipment, then sends a paper report to the call center, where all the information is reentered, and there may be a cycle of correction and re-entry.  There is - in the best case - at least a day turnaround before the invoice is sent out to the customer.

With mobile devices, the whole process is much faster.  The field engineer receives more information in the first place, but the real benefit comes after his call is completed.  The customer can sign directly into the device, information corrected immediately, and an invoice can be sent immediately.

In summary Pat then drew the following conclusions from these considerations:

• Real-time connection is only occasionally necessary.
• Mobile is not necessarily wireless.
• Large file transfers may sometimes be done most efficiently by driving back to the office.
• Different devices for different uses.

Questions

Dock Allen asked Pat to clarify his use of the term 'real-time'

Pat Brans: I was simple meaning 'always-connected'

Mobility and Wireless Issues in Norwegian Hospitals

Per Hasvold, Research Scientist, Norwegian Center for Telemedicine, University of North Norway

Per Hasvold began by describing some of the conclusions from his project, and explained that he would be using the term 'in the field' rather than 'mobile' because it describes people away from their base doing productive work.

The first thing to be remembered is that people are trying to do a job which does not center around mobile technology; in this example it relates to caring for people.

There is a great deal of formal and informal information being communicated, a lot of people working together, who need to collaborate.  People are very good at communicating: that is a big challenge when building tools for communication.  When a nurse says that 'Mr. Johnson is OK' she is communicating a great deal of information; she has carried out a lot of work to come to the conclusion and communicates much in the way she says it.

Per described the story of Nurse Lars.

'Nurse Lars gets a phone call from a relative to Mrs. Hansen in room B7.345.  They want to know if she is ready to come home as they are in town and may bring her home.  Nurse Lars needs to know if the resume has been written and if the nurse report is finished.  He puts the call on hold and goes into the nurse HQ to look at the whiteboard.  Nothing is noted on the WB, so he looks for nurse Anita who is in charge of patients in room B7.345.  After 3 minutes he finds Anita and learns that the nurse report is ready, but she doesn’t know if the doctor has prepared the resume. They both go to look for doctor John. Lars calls him and is lucky to find him in his office.

'Lars picks up the call from Mrs. Hansen’s relatives and informs them that she will be discharged later that day, and then attends other duties annoyed at having lost at least five minutes of his busy day.  He is also acutely aware of the fact that his day will have dozens of such delays and interruptions and he will spend much of his day looking for people, information or searching for documents, filling in forms, not to mention the unfortunate incidence the other day: Someone of the doctors had only updated three of the seven schedule charts for the operating theatres and two patients were prepared and rolled in for surgery.  “We need to find some new solutions and organize ourselves differently, soon!” Lars told me.'

Per described the role of Telemedicine and Health Informatics as a way to organize healthcare services through the use of technology, independently of place and time.

In 1997 the future had been described in terms of a virtual world in which by putting on special glasses a doctor could see patients and all the information about them without needing to be in the same place.  this technology was described to healthcare professionals without any greatly positive response.

Subsequently, research methods were based on brainstorming sessions in which feedback was gathered, and health departments began to think about how they could improve their ways of working.  Then workshops were enabled communication about the requirements and the potential.  This gave developers working with the system a better idea of the needs.

He showed some interesting pictures illustrating the many forms that healthcare professionals had to use, and the many writing implements that were carried in the pockets of nurses.  Many notes are handwritten and personal - a reminder on a loose piece of paper.

The first step was to install an IEEE 802.11b wireless network in the department, and to provide two laptop PCs with wireless access.  Very soon the staff found use for them, especially for meetings at which nurses would meet to discuss patient care.  Being able to bring up details of reports from various departments relating to the healthcare of patients proved very valuable.  Some nurses chose to take a PC with them when they did their rounds - the choice depended on whether they felt at home with a computer, felt the need for one, and whether they felt it to be an appropriate device to use in the company of a patient.

One of the central points in the department was a white board listing the patients, which bed they were in, and some of the details of their care.  An electronic version of this was prepared using PDAs, which also allowed one to click on a patient's name and to display further details of their care, with information such as the schedule for the operating theatre.  A lot of time was spent observing the way the medical staff used the system and improving the information that was displayed.

He described an overview of the system that had been used

The University hospital computer department had been very cooperative, regarding this exercise as an opportunity to learn; they also saw the potential for reducing their overall costs.  Security was set up on the PDAs to prevent access to other hospital systems.

Other issues arose during the exercise: the white board had been an informal meeting place, with a lot of informal exchange of information, and one concern had been whether this informal communication would need to be replaced by formal meetings.  Another concern related to the differing approach of individuals to the use of computers.  Some medical staff were also concerned about whether there was a health risk associated with radiation from wireless communications.

Some other work has been done on the way in which mobile devices could be integrated with the uniform.  A design project has been carried out, testing some of the ideas that have been generated.

The work is not complete.  Remaining issues include:

• Battery life
• Security
• The weight of PDA devices
• Integration with installed base: work is going on to allow access to information held on central computers.
• It must be possible to sterilize the device
• It takes a long time to get from research and development to having a commercial product.
• How to develop trust between co-workers on the network.  This is a key issue, because without the human element of communication it is not easy to create this in remote working.

There are now several projects under way in Norway and Finland:

• Secure communication: MUNIN project (Thales)
• Telenor: Pre-UMTS network in Alta, homecare nursing
• RiT2000: New hospital in Trondheim
• Finland: Access to radiology via Nokia Communicator
• Emergency Medicine: Logistics, resource management, overview of scene, medical info (ECG, Identity, etc.)
• Marine Telemedicine: WLAN+mobile computers on boat, Satellite WAN

Questions

Richard Paine: Did you have problems with coverage of the wireless LAN, or information drops
Per Hasvold: No: the only problem we had was interference with a microwave oven!

Janet Laylor: Have you validated cardiac equipment in the hospital environment
Per Hasvold: We didn't, but we are aware of the problems of radiation patterns.

Keeping Mobile Executives Connected

Janet Laylor, Senior Consultant, Management Systems Designers, Inc

Janet Laylor's presentation told the story of the experience of the US National Library of Medicine.  She introduced the library as the largest medical library in the world, which is helping the world to get access to medical information including the details of the human genome project.

She began by discussing the need to communicate.  Managers expect to have mobile access to the Web, to email, and the ability to send and receive huge data files.  Speed was less important than effective content delivery.

The solution first adopted provided through a US company called Ricochet; it was a dial-up system, with some access through ISDN lines.  The good thing about this solution was that it was an always-on, high-speed medium environment.  It was relatively inexpensive and easily hooked up to laptops and PDAs, and cost did not depend on the amount of use of the network.  The disadvantage was that it was localized to relatively few high-density areas - San Francisco, Washington DC, Baltimore, and so on, and in the majority of the US, however, it did not connect.  This was not too much of a problem because executives were mainly working in these places, and the system worked well until the company providing the service went bankrupt because they overextended themselves.

This left the Library of Medicine without a Service Provider, and the potential for a Wireless solution was examined, using a broker called GoAmerica.  The concept was excellent: the broker would bill at a fixed rate, and then seek out their own service providers to actually provide the service.  This relationship was maintained for about a 12-18 months, until prices began to be increased dramatically.   The reasons for this breakdown were various:

• Greed?
• The broker had poor statistical information - they did not know how users were exploiting their system.
• There was a breakdown of agreements with carriers, and there was no formal agreement about charging for roaming.
• One department was using a device which communicated using Telnet  - every character sent was a separate packet, and was charged for.

The next solution was to examine a mixture of wired and wireless, asking the questions:

• What do we need?
• What can we afford?
• How accessible - easy to use - are the technologies?
• How sound are the technologies?
• How secure are the technologies (and their providers)?

Technologies that were examined were Sprint PCS (now in use by the High-Performance Computing Labs), Bluetooth (not appropriate to the need), 3G (not yet here, and seems likely to be localized to high-density areas).

So now, the Library of Medicine has gone back to basics, with dialup lines and home dsl/ISDN.  Executives have 802.11b access points in their homes, and in their offices, with which they are delighted.

In conclusion, the experience had been disappointing.  The technology is available and the market is ready, but the vendors are arguing with each other and the market is not growing as it should.  In the US, the allocation of bandwidth is a problem.  There is much bandwidth that is not used - in TV, for instance, a lot of the waveband is restricted by the FCC.  Old technologies that are taking up 4-10 times the space that they need are preventing the growth of newer technologies.

She hoped for the future that sanity would prevail, and that bandwidth would become available as a result of new technologies and FCC policy.

Questions

Bob Blakley, IBM/Tivoli: As far as wanting compression to fix the bandwidth problem, are there not other ways to solve the bandwidth problems, isn't the solution to gain higher bandwidth by reducing the size of cells?
Janet Laylor referred to a remark Steve Jobs, that technology's success is its own albatross; but in the end, at some point, old technologies should be killed-off.

Richard Paine: Have your doctors had a problem migrating from their first service to their wireless LANs?
Janet Laylor: No, because it has been made easy for them, and the change has been concealed behind a simple user interface.

Q: In Japan, 3G is becoming step-by-step more popular.  How would you define a high-density area?
Janet Laylor: We are on the fringe of Washington, and that I would regard as a high-density area.  Here, in Disneyland, I would not regard as high-density.

Is Privacy as much of an Issue for the Mobile Worker?

Michele Rubenstein, Solutions4Networks

Michele Rubenstein, introduced her presentation by asking the audience the source of good judgment: (experience), and the source of experience: (bad judgment).  She explained that she intended to consider three views of her subject: aspects of privacy and mobility; best practices; and finally to draw some conclusions.

She began by quoting from a report released the previous day by the Computer Security Institute, in which it had been reported that most serious losses from cybercrime occurred through the theft of proprietary information; reported losses had increased from $150m to $170m in the last year have come from the loss of key information, and one key reason for the increase is the greater mobility of the workforce.  78% of respondents reported some form of employee abuse, and again this is rising because mobility is rising.  Lastly, financial losses from employee abuse have increased almost 60% in a year.

Michele posed the question: Are security and privacy mutually exclusive?: sadly, she felt the answer is often 'yes'.  Is security for the non-mobile worker different? - not necessarily; there are tools available that are not being used to the extent they could.  Potential solutions include:

• Encryption tools
• Biometrics
• Certificate based tokens

A major issue that it not being tackled for the mobile worker is: how is identity-proofing handled for the mobile worker?  In an office, there is usually some sort of physical identification process - a corporate ID, for instance, which has to be validated against an internal database.  How is this managed for a mobile worker?  Similarly, issues relating to identity management are often not managed well for a mobile worker.  Issues include

• Trust
• Roles
• Delegation, especially if it's automated.
• By comparison to fixed devices there is little security available for phones, PDAs, pagers, etc.  Remember that the mobile worker is responsible for the security of the resource.
• We often assume that security is in place when it's not.

Michele turned now to the accessibility of information.  She had not been permitted to bring her corporate computer to the meeting because it was international and because wireless technologies were to be used.  There are risks of theft of information, of assets such as hardware and intellectual property, in an environment where corporate physical security is normally unavailable.
When people are mobile, private space is lost, and there is no longer the privacy that comes from working in an office or even at a personal desk.  If you're a mobile worker you might be tempted to work in a public place like a train or an airport lounge, but there is little real privacy there and there is little control over what others see you do.  Similarly, mobile phones can be overheard.
She questioned whether VPN technology is used significantly, maybe because it occupies much of the bandwidth of a dialup line.

Michele then considered some legal issues associated with mobility.  What is the legal situation when there are different laws in different regions?  There are also retention issues: if a company is sued and the only copy of the relevant information is on a mobile device, legally the responsibility may lie with the person using the device.  What are liabilities when something goes wrong? - the holder of a mobile device can have a problem when it comes to a law-suit.  If the data is encrypted and taken out of the country of residence, there can be legal problems in travel from Europe to the US or vice versa.

Other issues relate to the retention of information.  If there are national or corporate guidelines for retention of data, the employee has to be trusted to implement them.  These are issues that really aren't addressed very well, and lawsuits are increasingly arising from them.  Recent lawsuits are beginning to decide that not retaining information, even if there is a corporate policy, can cause the company legal problems.  These things are not being considered seriously and they should be.

Michele pointed out that it is a business decision to decide whether you are going to support a mobile workforce.  It is not hard to find the business model, but there are real business issues involved.  When September 11th happened, only those who had kept their mobile data were able to restart working in 12 hours.  The reason that Wall Street could not reopen for a week was because of poor disaster recovery systems on the part of the companies involved.

The business model needs to address other issues such as 

• The ROI and TCO as part of the mobile worker cost model
• Whether mobility is essential to ebusiness
• How the basic infrastructures are handled for mobility - messaging, directory
• Management of identities, roles and delegation
• How access to resources and information is managed
• How corporate data, policies, regulations, etc., are affected by increased mobility of the workforce
• Decreased cost of operations for the employer
• HR implications - especially for a mobile worker who is rarely in the office

Michele then considered some of the personal issues relating to mobility and the use of wireless devices.  There are many opportunities:

Convenience for mobile workers who can work when they want rather than when they have to.  This opportunity can also turn into a personal problem because without the discipline afforded by traveling to an office work can expand to fill all the space in one's life.

There are opportunities for increased productivity.  There is the ability to work away from the office yet still have access to resources; these things can lead to better morale and an improved quality of life, and maybe a reduced need for daycare for children.  However, mobile workers are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, which can lead to other difficulties.

Michele concluded that privacy in a mobile world is not that different from privacy in a non-mobile world.  The difference with mobility is that we have sacrificed aspects of mobility (like security and the legalities) for the convenience of the mobility.  Issues like security need to be faced and budgeted for.  If you want to apply best practices in a mobile world, think of the issues that apply in the wired world and apply the same principles, amended appropriately.

Mobility is not technology, it's mostly about politics, policy and management.

Q: If you're in a homogeneous judicial environment like the US it's OK, but globally you end up that if you can't have encryption you can't have security.
Michele Rubenstein: It is more of an issue for a global corporation.  The business model needs to reflect the issue and you're right that it's more of a problem in Europe than it is in the US

Carl Schopmeyer: What's your perception of where we're going in trying to achieve group working in a mobile world.
Michele Rubenstein:  I have not seen anything on the market.  Issues are things like bandwidth and  availability.  If you're a mobile worker relying on dialup you're in trouble.

Richard Paine: Have you run into any reliable role-based products that fit the need?
Michele Rubenstein: None that don't require additional integration.  Where I am right now we're trying to provide authentication for a web based service that services a population of 100m.  The products that are available don't collaborate with each other and there are other reasons why they're not adequate.

An Increasingly Mobile Workforce - The Way Ahead

Value and Usability in a Mobile World

Michael A Krasner, Principal, Krasner Consulting

Michael Krasner began his presentation by considering the Road Warrior, and showing a 'Sprint' commercial that showed a man who had collapsed in the street being helped to voice dial a number.

Moving to the trends that are driving the opportunity, he considered:

• End-user mobility: this is a worldwide trend, and business methods are changing accordingly; it is combined with an exploding appetite for information – consumer & business – from anywhere
• Convergence not just of technology (Internet & telephony, voice & data) but of data and applications (information, commerce, entertainment).  Some things have helped like better technology and better user interfaces like speech recognition.  The underlying infrastructure will help as it develops, as will standards development like VoiceXML and SALT.

On the other hand we see a 'Challenging time of Great Opportunity'.  The business environment for wireless network operators is changing: capital budgets are tighter, the bond with subscribers is weakening, and there is a need to re-launch mobile data services.

Michael then showed a further video showing a vision of a future in which voice video telephone and web technology had all merged, and followed this by his own mobile voice portal vision which would provide the ultimate personal connectivity—anywhere and everywhere, mobile and fixed, personal and business, work and play, would deliver personalized, high value multi-media content, communication and transactional services, and would employ a natural voice user interface as the primary method for control and navigation, and multiple modalities (voice, text, graphics, video) for presentation and interaction.

He described the results of market research which showed high demand in both the US and Europe for access to a voice portal.  In both the US and Europe the same 5 services (Voice Activated Dialing, Voice Mail, Email, Address Book and Calendar) were high priority, with 90% in the US and 82% in Europe describing the service as appealing, and 35% (US) and 36% (Europe) willing to change service providers in order to use the service.  Priorities for applications were:

• United Kingdom: Weather, Address Book
• Germany: Travel directions, VAD, email, VM and reminders
• France: Restaurant information, Voice mail, appointment scheduling, email, travel directions, traffic info
• Italy: Shopping, Travel directions, address book, VAD
• Spain: Soap opera news, VAD, travel directions, buying travel tickets
• Sweden: Email and reminders
• Japan: research indicates a strong demand for a complete multi-modal mobile voice portal solution including: Unified messaging, PIM and Content.  Research in Japan shows that Japan is not really different, just ahead of the rest of the world.

On the regulatory side, there is a ban in many countries on using cell-phones in cars: hands-free devices are generally OK.

Michael went on to discuss the business case from the network operators' point of view.  The Yankee Group did some market research, and showed that the average revenue per user is declining in Europe, from around 45$ to around $30 per month.  Voice is still the largest part of the market, despite the increase in use of SMS.  Basic Voice Activated Services (like voice dialing) are expected to rise to a penetration of 70% by 200.  Looking at minutes of use and monthly subscription, we see that 10$/month for premium services and $1/month for basic services gives a increase if revenue over the entire user base  of about 10% - around $8bn.

Michael then showed a video produced by a company called mcntele.com, which was was set up because its founder wanted to call back a number in a restaurant and couldn't find the number, so he decided to create a company to deal with the problem; it uses the brand name 'Veronica'.  The Personal Assistant Service incorporates a natural language VUI and encompasses specific customer-oriented processes and services.

He then moved to the theme of usability.  Voice-controlled voice mail at Blu, the 4th largest wireless operator in Italy, implemented this as the default for their users, and 80% overall rated the service as very good or higher; they perceive the system to have been a great success.

Current user experience is that there is a limit on user interaction for command, navigation and presentation, but when we get to 3G the mixing of voice and data will become the norm.  The standards that will enable this to happen are what will drive progress.

Lessons: let users choose their preferred interaction modes.  Text comes as an email: users need to be able to listen or look at it, and want to reply by text or voice.

Standards: from the carrier point of view, any solution must be carrier-grade i.e. deployed globally, in multiple languages, scalable to millions of users with high reliability and security.  A solution must be customizable to the brand and other requirements of the network operator.  The toughest requirement is integration with existing with existing systems such a billing.

Disaggregation is a key issue.  In the Web world the separation into browser clients, application servers and data servers enabled the proliferation of products and information, so that anyone building a Web browser knows that everyone around the world has content to view.  The same thing is happening in the mobile telecommunications industry; systems are being separated into UI presentation, Applications and Data/content, and this will enable the growth of the market.  VoiceXML was the first industry standard to emerge, and the VoiceXML Forum works with W3C on this.  

Michael described VoiceXML as the emerging industry standard, driven by the VoiceXML Forum with over 600 members, and W3C with over 500 members.  VoiceXML 1.0 is mature (3 years), and W3C have a working draft of VoiceXML 2.0.  However, VoiceXML does have weaknesses with respect to multimodality and telephony call control.  

Speech Application Language Tags are being developed by the SALT Forum.  SALT is a lightweight set of extensions to existing markup language with a focus on multimodal and telephony access.  It unifies voice and visual Web application in a single browser and enables developers to seamlessly embed speech enhancements in existing HTML, xHTML and XML pages, using familiar languages, technologies and toolkits.

Summary, Michael concluded that there is value to be created for everyone by having applications that end-users find valuable.  The network is a given; but it also needs great applications and great content, and the user interfaces need to be highly usable and to understand the user.

Lastly, the standards that are enabling disaggregation are really beginning to drive the industry.

Questions

Question: I don't think the Japanese culture is different from Europe and the US.   Even in Japan, the most common applications are shopping, restaurants, travel and the weather.  Voice portal has been available for some time for timetable, travel and trains.
Michael Krasner: One cultural difference arises from the difficulty of entering text in Japan so voice brings greater benefits.

Richard Paine.  When you referred to disaggregation of the Internet model were you referring to the Web?
Michael Krasner: Yes: the idea of having servers, content, and browsers, separate from each other, enabled growth in the Web.  Every RFP From a Telco asks for support of VoiceXML

Craig Heath: any comment on using voice for authentication?
Michael Krasner: It's got a lot better in the last couple of years, in general it will be combined with PIN codes.  The systems that do voice recognition are being combined with speech recognition.

Summary

Allen Brown, President & CEO, The Open Group.

Allen Brown summed up by emphasizing the aspects of device management that have arisen; security as a pragmatic rather than a purely technical aspect.  Mobile technology is being reflected in the ways organizations are working.

People need access to more information.  Within many corporations now, the requirement for integrated information is growing.  The need to break down the stovepipes in organizations.  We need to have standards and IT that reflect that change.   We need to create integrated information infrastructures in all organizations, and they need to be based on standards.

When The Open Group introduced the idea of In3 at the last conference in Anaheim, and the next conference in Boston is going to look at one aspect of bounderyless Information Systems, within the limits of security and timeliness.  In Boston we will be looking at the role of Web Services, including Standards like XML and SOAP.

When we get to Cannes in October we are going to extend the theme in a different direction.

Mobile Work: trends and Challenges

Richard Bauly, VP Strategy & Business Development, Psion Teklogix Inc.

Richard Bauly began by quoting Peter Drucker: 'A change is something that people do; a trend is something that people talk about'.  He expressed the view that there are lots of trends in business, but mobility has reached the stage at which it is a reality.

He defined mobile work as 'work done away from a traditional place of work or within the place of work but done away from your desk'.  It includes general management roles and task-specific functional roles.
Mobility is the extension of the enterprise to the point of activity. It is moving from place-centric to people-centric computing, and in a sense it is the most “natural” form of computing. 
In the industrial revolution, as machinery was developed, people started moving in from the fields and became tied to machinery.  Even in the 80s and 90s as computers have come to our desks, we have been tied to a desk environment.  Mobility is cutting that cord so that it becomes natural again; it is taking what sits in the enterprise to the point of activity, where the real work is happening.

He presented a 'Report Card' on the use of mobile technology in assisting people to do their jobs:

• Generic Computing: email, word processing, etc - enterprises have done pretty well - say B-.
• Task-specific Computing: something that relates to a specific job - very few organizations have managed to deploy mobile solutions for these applications, and overall the score should be about D.

Richard posed the question: 'What if wireless telecommunications were ubiquitous in all major population centers, and there were a broad range of mobile devices, what percentage of workers would be working in a mobile way?  He suggested that the answer would be: a very small percentage.  The reason: because there are other constraints.  In particular because task-specific solutions have a higher level of impact and are less standard across individual enterprises.

It is not as simple as giving a workforce a mobile device – business processes have to change – but there are also technology issues: security of corporate data: when deploying a mobile workforce, bits and pieces of important corporate data are being “kept” in the field and there are risks attached.  It is important that Security has to be commensurate with the damage that can be done.  There is a cost-benefit analysis, because sometimes it is worth taking a risk for the sake of the business.

Other challenges include the support of the newly mobile workforce, on which many organisations are working:

• Mobile device configuration and systems management (IBM/Tivoli, Computer Associates, Altiris, Novell/Callisto, Xcellenet, Mobile Automation,etc.)
• Data synchronization (Synchrologic,Avantgo, Extended Systems, Pumatech) 
• Backup of data (Connected, Xcellenet, Verita)

Those who are charged with deploying mobile solutions have to consider a very wide range of components that have to be assembled to build a solution.

So why have companies like Fedex, DHL, Honeywell, and so on, achieved mobilization many years ago?  In certain industries the benefit of mobility was so obvious that they very clearly outweighed the cost of changing their business processes.

There are very few jobs where individuals really need to have information updated every 5 or 10 minutes; the majority are happy to know every few hours - this would be an enormous improvement on what happens now.

BPR - Business Process ReEngineering

Over the next five to ten years enterprises need to begin re-thinking how they “hang together”. This is a slow process and must be driven within the context of sound financial discipline.  Richard now turned to some of the key trends that are driving the mobile market for the future:

• Corporations now see the value of equipping the mobile worker: people making investment decisions will only invest in mobility when there is not only a clear return but a clear path to that return.  The only issue is Return on Investment.
• Open systems and standard platforms: these are key - GPRS, CDMA, 802.11, Java, Bluetooth, ... all these are key standards because without them we will all keep reinventing the wheel
• Connectivity and bandwidth improvements.  It's fair to say that wireless connectivity is still a novelty, and it's taken over 10 years to progress from communicating in text to where we are now with Web browsers.  There is a lot of future potential in 802.11: some have suggested 802.11 could be as dramatic in impact as the browser/internet. The economic and business models still need to “age”, but there is a lot of potential for mobile workers to travel to a hot-spot, especially if they are traveling to one anyway, and synchronize data.
• Convergence is supporting mobility because devices will support a broad range of functions, and task-specific people can have a device that this support everything they need.
• An appliance view of devices: the more like a domestic appliance that mobile devices become, the better they will be for supporting business processes.
• Desktop power in mobile devices: In 4-5 years, pocket devices will be as powerful as desktops are now, and the key issue is to regard displays and keyboards as accessories rather than key central components.  Messages to manufacturers include:
  • Mobilizing enterprise workers requires stable yet evolving platforms. PDA’s for the consumer market are changing “skin” and peripherals every 6-12 months. 
  • Businesses need device platforms designed with end-user needs in minds and with stability and durability.
  • The consumer-driven solutions are much better suited for the generic deployments, not task-specific deployments.
• The Supranet: A Gartner Group term describing the emerging, ubiquitous network infrastructure that links the "e-world" (i.e., the world of electronic devices such as computers, phones and televisions) and the "p-world" (i.e., the physical world of paper, houses, inventory, people, vehicles and other objects) within natural human interactions.  The Supranet is enabled by four key phenomena: 
  • Embedded computers in many everyday objects 
  • Next-generation wireless networking, providing global indoor and outdoor connectivity to the Internet 
  • Interfacing technologies that enable bi-directional communication between p-world and e-world components (e.g., bar code scanning, speech recognition and electronic identification) 
  • The design of applications that satisfy user needs in a natural way with combinations of media and devices 

Implications and homework

• Organizations will need a mobility strategy to address the challenges.
• In terms of where we are today, it is in many respects like where we were in 1990 in the PC world. The process in PC’s took 10 years. We need to be patient and realistic. 
• The “Wedge”: larger entities with the resources and needs should start by prototyping small workgroups with simple mobile tasks like email, PIM and basic CRM-type connectivity.  It is better to have 10 people working productively with something that can be leveraged into the group as a whole than to invest a vast amount of money in something the success of which is uncertain.

There are some points that seem to be clear.

• Mobility for workers in enterprises is increasing and should continue to do so in a virtuous circle (the need exists, the technology allows it, and the need increases as the options increase to enable mobility).
• The desktop PC-centric era as the main model of computing is quickly being put behind us– as devices and software are coming together to make mobilization a reality, not a novelty.
• More and more power in our pockets, hands and jackets! Do not be surprised when by 2005 we have in our hands the equivalent power that is now on our desktop.
• There is no “killer application” on the horizon. Voice was it, and there are some things that lots of people want, but nothing that everyone wants. Mobile work is more about the gradual evolution of technology and business processes to support more efficient ways of working.

And some others to which the answer is not yet clear:

• The impact of WLAN standards and 3G standards: how will they both roll out ? – "hotspots" like 802.11, compared with 3G
• Will the road traveled in Japan and Europe be different than in North America?  Will there be one path, or two or three.
• How will security best be addressed?
• How will screen and input technologies evolve?
• What types of devices can we expect in the future?