Does Wireless Matter?

Mobile. Wireless. What's the difference? While many of you will argue that distinguishing between wireless and mobility is playing with semantics, I am here to say that the difference is not only profound, but the separation of these two concepts is fundamental to ultimate success in this industry.

Wireless is a technology. Mobility is a state of mind. Mobility leverages the independent computing power of the handheld device while wireless enables a communications platform. Wireless is an extremely valuable technology, but without mobility, it can never achieve its full potential.

Mobile vs. wireless

Traditionally, there have been two unique schools of thought when it comes to pushing software beyond the PC and into the hands of users: thick-client (mobile) and thin-client (wireless). Mobile applications require a piece of software to be installed on the device, while a wireless application does not require any additional software assuming there is a standard browser.

As it turns out, the vast majority of software successfully deployed for enterprise applications leveraged a thick-client mobile architecture, while many consumer applications used a thin-client wireless architecture. The main reason for this was that while consumers were willing to suffer unreliability and poor interactivity in return for requiring no up-front software installation, business users simply wouldn't use the application if it was not reliable or if it had a poor user experience. Even when wireless applications worked as promised, they still required almost twice the number of steps to launch the application than a mobile application, which dramatically reduced usability.

The [anti-thick] thin client

In the era of the dot com bubble and through much of the bust, businesses and enterprise software providers alike began Web-enabling their existing mainframe and client-server applications. Everything was about going "thin," and anyone who recommended a "thick-client" architecture for almost any reason committed career suicide. As the wireless networks came of age, developers discovered that they could easily modify their Web applications to be viewable on wireless devices, and a "wireless" boom ensued. While most of these wireless applications resulted in utter failure, most of the software industry would not even consider "thick" alternatives and chose instead to stick with a wireless mindset and just wait for the reliability and availability of wireless networks to achieve ubiquitous status.

Discovering the smart client

Driven by advances in software distribution architectures and device management systems, innovative developers discovered and are continuing to optimize a hybrid approach called a "smart client." This architecture essentially describes an intelligent piece of software that can sense the availability of the network. When the network is available, it can use it. When there is no connectivity, it can still be used with data local to the device, and can elegantly limit certain functionality if actual connectivity or non-resident data is required. Although a "smart client" requires installation, it is often a simple process that most users can easily handle.

Microsoft and Google both go mobile