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That's exactly what the employees at iAnywhere Solutions, a unit of Sybase headquartered in Waterloo, Ontario, are trying to figure out. About 18 months ago the company, which makes software for handheld devices, plunged headlong into the wireless world by turning its entire campus into a giant wi-fi hot spot. Employees--mostly in marketing and product development--with wi-fi--enabled laptops (about half the 250 full-time staff at headquarters) can access the Web at lightning speed from anywhere in the building, no wires necessary...
What's so great about wi-fi that a company would reconfigure its entire computer infrastructure around it? For openers, it's as fast as a high-speed T1 line, more convenient than a mobile phone, as addictive as a BlackBerry and nearly imperceptible. What's not so great about it? Same thing. Wi-fi makes work that much easier to do and that much harder to escape. "We're just adapting to this new environment, adapting to what the technology allows you to do," says Martyn Mallick, a product manager at iAnywhere...
...company is one of a surprisingly small number of U.S. firms that have installed wi-fi networks. Fewer than 5% of U.S. workers use them today, according to an estimate by Gartner, a high-tech research firm. With IT budgets squeezed, few companies are rolling out new projects that don't immediately add to the bottom line. But pioneers like iAnywhere are giving it a shot--and giving the rest of us a preview of what the wireless workplace is like...
...some companies, says Gartner wireless analyst Phillip Redman, the wi-fi distractions at meetings have got so bad that they use the "say the name twice" rule, because that's often what it takes to get someone's attention...
...sure, wi-fi doesn't make sense for every employee. iAnywhere didn't try to replace its wired network entirely, says CEO Terry Stepien. Some of its engineers need even more bandwidth than the fastest wi-fi networks can support, and the tech-support staff need desks with phone lines, so they don't use wireless laptops. (Eventually, some of them will be able to work wirelessly, using an Internet phone system instead of a regular phone...