Alex A. Hutnik

Next year, Cingular is expected to release a high-speed wireless internet service that is fast enough to support videoconferencing and other bandwidth intensive services.  The implications for a service like this are huge.  Think about the wireless model here at Case.  I can walk around with my laptop, from one end of campus to the other, and except for some rough spots near Euclid, I can maintain access to all of my school work, media, e-mail, and applications.  Now instead of an area the size of the Case campus, think about an entire city and what this kind of mobility means.  If the popularity grows enough that this hits the 30 largest cities in the U.S., we’re looking at a whole new way of enabling a mobile workforce.  Employees can work while they watch their kids at soccer practice, on their way to getting their dog groomed, or even while they shop.

If Verizon comes out with something like this, I will buy one of their Smartphones the same day.

I’m going to take a break in the ongoing ERP discussion and touch on how Microsoft enables a mobile workforce.  There’s a ComputerWorld article that discusses the lengths to which the company goes to squash break-in attempts on their computer networks, while still allowing for employees to use company resources at home.  Typically, the more tightly the network engineers guard the network, the more inconvenient such remote access can be.  Indeed, the article cites Microsoft as saying that sometimes remote access can take as long as 5 to 15 minutes to initiate.  But it’s always worth the extra hassle; the company’s crown jewels (the source code to all of their products) are found on Microsoft’s servers.  In the end, the complex authentication schemes and products pay off; a recent snow storm blanketed Redmond and Microsoft estimated that 75% of its workforce worked from home that day without incident.