January 8, 2007 by Kevin Price.
First BLOG
Hi, there. Kevin Price here, founder and CEO of AccuCode. AccuCode is one of the leading software developers and system integrators in the United States specializing in the application of mobile computing and automated data collection technologies. This is my very first BLOG entry. Forgive me is I am ignorant of the etiquette and protocols of the medium. For this first series of entries I would like to provide a review of major technological and business developments activities of networking, business software, mobile computing and automated data collection. These are the primary sectors addressed and provided by AccuCode to our customer in retail, manufacturing, transportation and distribution.
Before diving into the major industry developments of 2006 I should make some disclaimers. Most of the content in this BLOG should be taken as opinion. For eleven years I have been known as one of the most out-spoken observers of our industry. Loved by some, disliked by many but always a polarizing voice. As an observer I do not hesitate to voice my observations, concerns and predictions. While many senior managers in our industry have found themselves on the cutting edge of my razor sharp tongue I always strive to be honest and forthright in my observations and complaints. If I am wrong I am adamantly wrong. If I am right I am just as adamant. When proven wrong I do not hesitate to acknowledge my error. I have enthusiastically eaten many a humble pie of over the past decade. However, I must be doing something right because over the past eleven years AccuCode has been recognized as one of the fastest growing technology companies in the US by Inc Magazine and four times by the Deloitte & Touche Fast 50 listing. I myself make a considerable side income acting as an industry analyst covering all of the public companies in the sector for some of the largest investment funds in the world. That being said, take this information for what its worth.
Networking
Major technological developments in the networking sector include open source networking, content based routing, Mesh Wi-Fi, WiMAX, EVDO, and location based services. I’m sure there are more but I have to keep this thing to some kind of reasonable length.
Cisco this year announced a new product offering featuring content based routing capabilities, specifically target at mobile computing, bar code and RFID oriented applications. The full implications of this technology won’t be seen for many years to come but by my estimations it is huge. Instead of a message being sent from on IP address to a single (or multiple) static recipients these network routers have the ability to analyze the application layer data and content of the message, determine its context and relevance and route it to all recipients that need it. If full leveraged at the software application layer this could dramatically reduce network congestion and dramatically enhance application performance. Today, virtually all data must make a round trip across the IP cloud to a host server that decides what to do with that particular bit of information and inevitably it ends up being stored in a database. This scenario creates the need for more and more processing power and storage on the server side. The reality is in real-time, business process automation applications (those the most leverage, mobile computing, bar code and RFID technologies) most of the data is transient in nature and only has relevance at the point and time that it is created. If it could be acted on by all the other applications and users that need it seconds after it was created, without ever having to make that round trip to the application server large IT organizations could save millions in infrastructure cost and operational efficiencies.
Open source networking hit the scene in 2006 with out much notice but that won’t last for long. In July Vyatta of San Mateo, CA announced the availability of their Open Flexible Router V 1.0 and they are not the only one. The idea here is that using open source software you can effectively turn any x86 based computer with the proper networking hardware and processors into a high performance network router that can compete very favorably against offerings from Cisco, 3com, HP, Nortel and others at a fraction of the cost. Further, using virtualization technology you can turn under utilized PC’s and servers into virtual routers while they are still doing their day jobs. As it is already doing in the enterprise software sector, the open source movement is likely to be a very disruptive force in the future of networking.
Mesh Wi-Fi first appeared on the market a couple of years ago but it didn’t really have much impact until 2006. As a result of their 2005 acquisition of Airspace, Cisco released their first Wi-Fi mesh product. The Aironet 1500 Series lightweight access point has been designed for outdoor use. It includes power adaptor for easy light or traffic pole installation. It can be combined with a compact solar panel and battery for completely autonomous operation. The 1500 is integrated into Cisco’s unified wireless infrastructure that includes centralized wireless network control and switching. This is by no means the first Wi-Fi mesh offering. Competitive offerings that predate the Cisco introduction include Stratix, Firetide, and Tropos Networks. Of course there have been proprietary mesh radio offerings on the market for many years but these products all use a combination of 801.11 A, B & G. Here is how most of them work. They use B/G as the local area wireless protocol and then 802.11 A, at 100MB per second through put, to automatically establish a backhaul connection to the next available access point. All AP’s on the network then route their back haul traffic back to the most available hardwired network connection. Several of these offerings can dynamically shift backhaul routing to the most efficient of multiple hardwired connections. Using these products can dramatically lower the cost of providing large scale wireless connectivity in a campus, metro or large installation environment. Within the next 12 months Mesh Wi-Fi will merge with WiMAX. In many metro-scale installations WiMAX will be used to replace both 802.11 A as the mesh protocol or replace the hardwired network connection. As metro-scale wireless installation increase in both size and volume during 2007 and beyond these technologies will play a pivotal role the wireless architecture. We can use this technology today to provide wireless coverage for large manufacturing or distribution environments at a fraction of the cost of a traditional Wi-Fi installation.
802.16 WiMAX officially started shipping in 2006. This much anticipated next generation of wireless technology has the potential to remake the telcom and ISP market places. Sprint Nextel recently announced intentions to invest $3 billion in the construction of a nation wide WiMAX network to provide high-speed wireless internet connectivity and converged mobile services for voice, data and video. WiMAX is a certification standard that applies to wireless offerings from a wide range of suppliers and frequencies. The 802.16 specification applies across a wide swath of the RF spectrum. However, specification is not the same as permission to use. There is no uniform global licensed spectrum for WiMAX. In the US, the biggest segment available is around 2.5 GHz, and is already assigned, primarily to Sprint Nextel and Clearwire. Elsewhere in the world, the most likely bands used will be around 3.5 GHz, 2.3/2.5 GHz, or 5 GHz, with 2.3/2.5 GHz probably being most important in Asia. In addition, several companies have announced plans to utilize the WiMAX standard in the 1.7/2.1 GHz spectrum band recently auctioned by the FCC, for deployment of “Advanced Wireless Services”. The technology has the ability to provide up to 70 MB per second and can span up to 70 miles (112 Km) in line of sight installation. However, these two capabilities are mutually exclusive and are only achievable under fairly ideal circumstances. A more typical performance will be 2MB per second over 2 kilometers and this is divided across all users in the same coverage cell. In the short term Wi-MAX will have a much larger impact outside of the US, providing voice and data services in third world countries and areas that have been previously uneconomical to reach. However, as Sprint Nextel and others like Clearwire start to leverage the frequencies they have purchased and mobile devices start to incorporate Wi-MAX capability this technology has the potential to remake the mobile computing, telcom and ISP markets.
EVDO and higher speed GSM/GPRS made significant progress this year. These cellular ISP services are gaining big ground with business users with large field user communities. Smart phones have made the most of these new network capabilities but ruggedized mobile computers from Symbol, Intermec, Hand Held Products and others have begun to incorporate these high-speed wireless services as well. Many of these devices (smart phones and rugged mobile devices) have also begun to take advantage of GPS enabled location based services. Several, integrated circuits for EVDO, CDMA and GSM now includes GPS transceivers that further leverage the cellular network to provide enhanced real-time location information. In coming years we will see location based services leveraged by the likes of Google, Yahoo and others to provide context sensitive based services.
Next week I’ll cover the major 2006 developments in the mobile computing sector, and a few predictions for 2007 and forward. Feel free to post any comments or request for future topics.
Until then,
Kevin
