Hello? Hello? I think a wombat must have chewed through the line. Maybe I'll just hang up. Can you hear me? Talking to eXeed managing director Michael Bosnar about mobility can be exciting. So exciting, in fact, that the phone goes dead as Bosnar waves his arms around somewhere in Melbourne and the earpiece drops out of his ear.
I think that's what he said. Is there a line anyway? Maybe he's gone wireless. Then it happened again. The second time, it wasn't the earpiece at all, but 'a problem with reception'. Which could, of course, mean anything.
All this mobility. It's a bit like a Monty Python skit in which a major political crisis is sparked when a Swong appears to have died. Which would be more of a problem if anybody knew what a Swong was in the first place and whether its life-or-death status was worth anything.
And when you turn on the security feature on your wireless-enabled laptop for the first time and a text box starts flashing orange, declaring that your masterful modern technology has detected an intruder. However, like the neighbour's cat that doesn't recognise its own image in the mirror, the dastardly intruder turns out to be none other than ... your laptop.
All this mobility. The products are fun. eXeed's Bosnar began an intensive push into distributing Hutchison Telecom's 3G products late last year and results are already good.
3G - or 'third generation' mobile wireless networking - hikes data transfer speeds and enables packet data networking, as opposed to traditional switched networking. Users can send or receive video, voice over IP and data, for example, by mobile phone.
'It's been quite exciting. I would say [our move] has paid for itself after the first three months. We've invested in people and resources, anything from eight to 10 people nationally, and the focus around that. And the rate of return has been very good, and that's without such things as the data card,' Bosnar says.
Bosnar is looking forward to the advent of data cards this month that will enable users to route 3G services through notebooks. That move should 'really bring on board ... a lot of resellers', he says, on top of some 60 eXeed already has hawking the gear.
In May, eXeed expects the release of PocketPC-type handhelds with 3G, which will be far advanced from the 'glorified diaries' of the past, he says. 'The upside is that a lot of our resellers figure that once they make the initial sale they can go back and say: "Do you know you can actually now do this?",' he says. 'We want the application stuff to get bigger, but over the last two months we have been building up the solution offerings.'
eXeed is also wooing ISVs with a view to encouraging more applications to be developed around 3G. The distributor has put a special 3G-focused ISV section on its website and is holding seminars in Melbourne and Sydney to spark what it believes might later become the major 3G earner.
For Bosnar, 3G is a wireless broadband alternative that can handle voice. 'It's in the combination of voice and data together. [3G] can do VoIP speed to 350 to 360Kb/s - six times faster than a modem that you plug into a wall,' he says.
Convergence around mobility is certainly a plus-wave in IT right now, in what has been largely been a sea of negativity for vendors and the channel alike, Bosnar says.
Yet many so-called mobility products are not terribly portable - yet.
'If you look at the back of a notebook there's a whole lot of cables. That's not true mobility,' he says. 'What you want is a mobile office that can actively synchronise with my desktop remotely, while sitting in on a conference call and also uploading a 1.5MB file in three minutes from the C: drive.'
Products are coming out now that might do that, Bosnar says, and the impact will be felt both vertically and horizontally throughout Australian business. 'Imagine being in real estate and videoing a house to forward [the images] to the email of your prospective clients - by mobile phone,' he says.
Horizontal security sales to verticals such as government, education, manufacturing or consumer could prove lucrative, Bosnar suggests, and eXeed is on the lookout for other vendors to add to its mobility push.
Yet he warns that resellers need to improve their approach to mobility, which often combines telecommunications and traditional IT aspects. Those sectors were once separate but today a unified, consistent approach is needed, he points out. 'There's a huge amount of ignorance,' he concludes.
If you happen to be a road warrior, to have remote manageability and instantly accessible applications at your fingertips is a boon.
But what if workers simply make three calls when one would have done, because the earpiece drops out of someone's ear and the line goes dead? Do we then waste more time looking for the earpiece on the floor of the SUV?
Mobility's success is just as dependent on peripheral issues - connectivity speeds, business processes, quality of support - as it is on the latest wireless hardware and standards.
As for productivity, Linksys Australia and New Zealand regional manager Brian Allsopp points to a study - sponsored by parent Cisco Systems - that suggests WLAN has brought real US business gains.
That November 2003 research claims a 16 percent hike in wireless networking deployments last year in the US saved US$14,000 worth of time per employee - twice the amount saved per employee in 2001.
The 400-organisation study also suggested that WLAN improved task accuracy. Some two-thirds of respondents claimed that their accuracy was improved, on average by 41 percent. Many were respondents in verticals such as healthcare, where being at the right place at the right time can really get results.
Allsopp says that staff at Cisco are working extra hours and claims that many are happy to do so - partly because of flexibility added by WLAN. Wireless makes it so much easier to sit at home and put in a couple of extra hours on something that can be then instantly sent around the world if necessary.
Participating in conference calls in opposite time zones - say, in the US - also loses a lot of its pain factor, he points out.
'But I still don't think there's any compelling application yet. I have an iPAQ and my hotspot coverage is flaky at best,' Allsopp says. 'I think there's a lot of stuff to do before mobility becomes reality.'
Like Bosnar, Allsopp hails the soon-to-be-available multiple mode handsets as a real step forward for mobility. When firms such as Nokia start releasing WLAN handsets, phone calls can be easily synchronised with what's going on in the office, on the PC. Voice is likely to prove the most compelling application for the next two years, he says.
'I think hotspot coverage is the piece of the puzzle that is lacking at the moment ... in Australia,' he adds. 'And I think the business traveller is going to be the key to driving hotspots initially.'
Growth in broadband is another building block that will help drive WLAN further into business. Right now, many businesses could not really take advantage of mobile IT even if they had any. Their pipes just are not big enough to handle the workload.
Allsopp sees 'fantastic solutions' becoming available to corporations and SMBs with broadband. 'An example might be remote monitoring - putting up a camera in one location and connecting it to the home via wireless broadband,' he says. 'You wouldn't believe how many enquiries we have had [for that] about monitoring p
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