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WiMax
Although WiMax networks being built together by Clearwire and Sprint are predominantly aimed at providing wireless coverage to residents and consumers in different cities, the networks can also provide additional coverage to corporate users in those areas. Through its partnership, Clearwire and Sprint rolled out WiMax service to Baltimore in January with a similar plan for Portland, Ore. in April, says Tim Donahue, vice president of marketing at Sprint. Although the two companies haven't yet identified other cities, the goal is to provide WiMax coverage to 40 million-to-60 million U.S. residents by the end of 2009 and 100 million people by late 2010, says Donahue.
Smartphones
Smartphones will continue to see improvements in features and functionality over the next few years, including higher-resolution screens and increased power for running enterprise applications, says Schoolar.
But these changes will also bring additional device and application management challenges to CIOs, says Gold. "For companies to run mobile applications like an SAP or Salesforce.com, CIOs are going to have to look at these applications as needing to run on a variety of different platforms for devices that start as relatively dumb to those running Linux and Windows in three years," says Gold.
In some cases, the simplest path for CIOs will be to skip application downloads and instead utilize Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and cloud computing models to connect end users with enterprise mobile applications, Gold adds. "The networks will have to be reliable enough to support SaaS, but we'll get to that in the next few years," Gold says.
Virtualization will also filter down into the smartphone space over the next two-to-three years, predicts Gold. That will enable IT departments to separate Joe's Facebook account when his smartphone is syncing up with the company's Microsoft Exchange system, says Gold. "You'll be able to separate the corporate Joe from the individual Joe," says Gold.
Next: Notebooks Aimed at Verticals
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