Wireless: Hot or Not?

destinationCRM.com writes about the current sate of mobile technologies for CRM purposes. Kevin Burden at IDC said, "we're a lot farther along in creating the mobile enterprise, but we're not there yet. Microsoft has a deal with the Census Bureau to provide 500,000 Smartphones. It's a substantial implementation, but so what? They should have done it two years ago."

According to Burden, "government moves slowly, but it's also one of the hot verticals--many government workers are mobile." He also noted some clever attempts at building awareness and desire for mobile CRM. Burden said, "SAP is building a wireless solution out of what works for its own sales team. To get customers interested, they just have the sales reps use mobile CRM for their own purposes when they go give demos of other SAP software."

Burden added "There's really no excuse for any of us to not be reachable at a moment's notice by cell phone. We're getting to the same point with email. Being away from the desk is not an excuse. IT using security concerns as an excuse to move slowly is going away. The security is there."
On the subject of Microsoft (MSFT) and Windows Mobile version 5, Burden said, "Microsoft is putting the decision to deploy mobility into the hands of individuals. This is what they need in order to fuel rapid growth. Before the end of 2006, we're going to see some sizable deployments around Windows Mobile. The Microsoft solution is late but it's very slick."

Regarding voice over wireless LAN (VoWLAN), Burden commented, What's truly hot is enterprise voice, if I want to gauge hot based on the inquiries I get from IDC clients. VoWLAN and network convergence could be the springboard that drives the development and adoption of other mobile services."