New research has revealed that Wi-Fi usage has grown significantly in recent years.

Wi-Fi is becoming pervasive in the computer-networking environment and can be found in many businesses. A key factor in uptake has been the interoperability provided by the availability of common standards, such as the IEEE 802.11 standard, and certification programs.

It is now apparent that the IT manager must be looking to include 802.11 technology as an important component in the organization’s networking infrastructure. With 90% of laptop computers now Wi-Fi enabled and many PDAs also including the technology, enterprises can now exploit the flexibility provided by Wi-Fi and make available resources and data from anywhere around the campus.

From the IT manager’s perspective, the key issues in the wireless world are security, productivity, and cost. Secure access needs to be provided to applications over what is inherently an unsecured network, along with authentication of remote users, and ensuring that corporate information is not compromised. While remote access is potentially an aid to productivity, this is only the case if users do not have to struggle with technical and procedural issues to gain access. If the infrastructure is not well planned or there are no management tools, the cost of administration can escalate as the number of users, devices, and locations increases.

What the enterprise customer wants, especially the smaller organization, is a simple-to-implement, end-to-end solution, not an assortment of technologies. By creating a unified access infrastructure layer, many of the issues are overcome; in particular, the cost of administration, the ability to scale effectively, and the flexibility to adapt to new requirements. Most importantly, security policies can be created and applied across the whole access layer, rather than relying on individual controls, and security updates can be more easily applied.

Unified access architecture answers the major concerns of the IT manager struggling with limited resources to control the growing number of problems. This approach avoids having to use multiple vendor technologies that require integration before deployment and the overhead of dealing with a number of suppliers.

Source: OpinionWire by Butler Group (www.butlergroup.com)