Information Age companies are about one-eighth of the way to becoming wireless.
I can't help but wonder whether Industrial Age companies, at the same juncture,
recognized that they were migrating to a horseless world. They were probably
more passive as they watched the postanimal-power economy evolve. Did they have
horseless strategies?

IT leaders are uncertain whether wireless technology belongs in the "do
now," "do next" or "do later" time bucket. The ritual
summer slowdown makes this a good time to pause and examine this future career-maker/breaker
for IT leaders. Wireless is a slow-moving train on the cusp of gathering momentum.
IT leaders have the opportunity of shaping this train before it enters the station.
Instead of playing catch-up, you can lead on this issue.

Here are five ways to exert leadership on wireless technology:

-- Get smart about it. Perform a market overview. Understand the technology
issues associated with wireless. (Security is a big deal here.) Understand the
costs and how your company's customers, their customers and your business unit
executives feel about the issue. And hold a "wireless Woodstock" to
synthesize and showcase your findings to internal constituencies and external
sources of expertise, such as a consultant who will help you with a wireless
implementation.

-- Create a "thinkers and dinkers" database, made up of thoughts
from journalists and analysts who cover the wireless arena, plus the academics
conducting research into it. Find the truly smart people in the space and build
relationships with them.

-- Create a "players database," consisting of vendors that are prototyping
products and consultants offering services. This phrase comes from George Geis'
brilliant new book, Digital Deals: Strategies for Selecting and Structuring
Partnerships (McGraw-Hill, 2001).

-- Select target vendors. The black eyes that many large and sophisticated
organizations experienced with slow ERP deployments have led to a re-examination
of the "buy what they have" way of dealing with vendors. In the wireless
arena, we're seeing a transition among select groups of high-performance organizations
to co-create differentiated technological platforms with trusted vendors.

-- Build and implement a pilot project. Find a business unit whose use of wireless
could differentiate relationships with customers. The optimal pilot project
involves fewer than 100 users and takes eight to 10 weeks to deploy. The emerging
lessons should include skills that must be developed, a rough idea of costs,
issues in dealing with wireless technology vendors and security and privacy
concerns.

I'm excited about the wireless arena, not so much because of the underlying
technology or its application, but because it can be a perfect test case for
the increasingly proactive and truly strategic role of the CIO and IT organization.
Historically, IT has been placed in the uncomfortable role of playing catch-up
to vendor-driven "hurry or you'll miss out" hype. This is the first
time I can recall that that hype machine has stalled.

Wireless remains a fuzzy and ill-defined concept in the minds of most senior
executives. What exactly is it? To some, wireless is synonymous with cell phones.
To others, it's a much larger grab bag of devices, including Web-enabled phones,
PDAs, handheld games, MP3 devices, digital cameras and e-mail terminals.

In the face of such widespread confusion, a well-informed, clear-thinking IT
organization has an opportunity to catalyze and manage conversations shaping
executives' thinking that will drive wireless strategy and subsequent deployment.
If we're not all thumbs, we hold our wireless future in our hands.

» posted by ITworld staff

Computerworld

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