As wireless technologies wax stronger in the market, established wireline corporations such as IBM Corp., Cisco Systems and Microsoft Corp. are learning to leverage both divisions as a fruitful business model.
The corporations have been churning out a series of products and solutions ranking them as potential wireless warriors.
“The main challenge for these companies is understanding the legacy environment,” remarked Jane Zweig, chief executive officer of The Shosteck Group, noting that such vendors as Nokia Corp., Nortel Networks and L.M. Ericsson have come to terms with such issues.
“Shedding the legacy heritage and knowing that it is different from wireline is what they need to address. For Cisco, IP evolution takes a long time and interoperability is not easy.”
Cisco is rolling out a suite of wireless applications for business, entertainment and personal management as well as in-building wireless LAN systems targeting various user types.
By embarking on sustained education across all sections and responding to market demand, both IBM and Microsoft believe that they are interfacing both divisions well enough to compete and even surpass traditional players in the future.
“The companies also are forming partnerships and are well-financed,” said Zweig. She said such partnerships help them address some of their weaknesses.
Both companies demonstrated the result of the synergies of their wireless and wireline divisions with a set of product announcements last week. IBM said it was the first to offer wireless access across its entire product lines and services, making it easier for companies to extend their businesses to mobile devices.
“Wireless is having profound implications for e-business,” said Michel Mater, general manager of pervasive computing division. “The potential explosion of people and devices connecting to the network is driving the need for customers to build infrastructures that are massively scalable, more reliable and that possess more intelligence than they do today. This is IBM’s sweet spot.”
Microsoft also rolled out its Microsoft Windows Media, which it hopes to optimize in collaboration with Intel Corp. for Intel XScale microarchitecture utilizing the Intel Integrated Performance Primitive.
“For a long time, the vision of Microsoft has been centered around putting PCs on the table,” said Ed Suwanjidar, product manager in mobile devices division. “But now, we are bringing out software anywhere, anytime in any device.”
He said his company is determined to deliver software in a “ubiquitous manner across devices.”
IBM’s pervasive computing division makes both wireline and wireless divisions cross fertilize ideas, said Val Rahmani, general manager for wireless solutions. She said the division, which ensures that chips are put across appliances, oversees the education of staff in all sections of the departments.
Suwanjidar said Microsoft’s leadership team, which includes Chairman Bill Gates and Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer, oversees the coordination between the wireless and wireline activities in the company.
Both Suwanjidar and Rahmani said both companies create an atmosphere that encourages the staff to develop ideas and products that will work in the wireless space.
Microsoft does not have an official education policy as Rahmani describes at IBM, but Suwanjidar said, “We expect everybody to keep updated on emerging technologies.”
But central to the strategies of the companies is market demand. Rahmani said any product idea goes through market research and testing involving customer councils and standard market research and analysis, and any decision is often primarily prompted by market demand.
“What we do is take the most important software to the customer and mobilize them over wireless networks,” said Suwanjidar.
Rahmani said both wireline and wireless divisions trade staff from time to time when staffers demonstrate talents for work in the other division. Although Suwanjidar says they trade staff, the company does not build compartments between wireline and wireless.
“We cross staff quite a bit, but we do not think of the company as wireless and wireline,” he commented.
Suwanjidar said IBM sees wireless as an extension of wireline, so it pools resources not just from staff with wireless acumen but from a wide array of professionals gifted in areas as diverse as banking, whose ideas will help IBM develop applications with scale, security, user interface and reliability.
IBM’s new wireless initiatives cover its portables, servers, infrastructure services, wirelessly enabled components and wireless business partners.
Its portables include its ThinkPad and WorkPad lines. The ThinkPads have dual antenna design with integrated support for 802.11 wireless LANs for stronger signal strength. The WorkPads are based on the Palm Computing Platform.
The company also has developed a remote management technology that allows system administrators to wirelessly control servers from afar with common, portable devices like Internet phones, PDAs and Web browsers.
With its Instant Wireless LAN service, IBM bundles its hardware, software and installation package with wireless facilities for high-speed, reliable wireless data transport.
Regarding components, IBM is partnering with Mitsubishi to develop low-power microchips for 3G cellular telephones.
IBM works with a network of 90,000 business partner firms, which now drive one-third of their revenues.
“With [this] announcement, IBM is staking a strong claim for leadership in the wireless space,” said Andy Seybold, president of Outlook4Mobility.
Microsoft says that with its Microsoft Windows Media, consumers will be able to send and receive personal digital audio and video, and download and stream digital music, Internet radio and short subject video such as trailers, news clips, financial information and weather reports.
