The great thing about technology is that it’s constantly evolving and improving. Just ask Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel and creator of Moore’s Law. With every doubling in processing power, the market is greeted with newer, faster systems.

Kozup: You can’t have wireless without wired.

Although few enterprises would question the value of these technical advancements, many may admit to the odd headache in assessing their business impact. Organizations are constantly evaluating technologies to sort the lemons from the goldmines.

Wireless technology is certainly no exception to this rule. Mobility has consistently offered the promise of improved competitiveness and agility via streamlined processes, improved collaboration and productivity. Yet, mobility is a broad term, and while the promise of business mobility is certainly transformational, IT must only adopt new technologies at the point where the opportunity surpasses the risk.

Ultimately, the role of IT is to provision services and infrastructure to optimize business performance. This means evaluating new technologies in the context of business needs. More than ever, employees have an expectation of connectivity irrespective of location. Applications must be accessible by the right user over the right device at the right time.

Mobility and the wireless networks that enable such devices have become critical to business performance. Yet, enabling true business mobility requires IT to take a practical approach to building the underlying network. Network performance must be at the forefront of any architectural planning.

Few technologies have improved the performance of wireless networks like the emergence of 802.11n. With the promise of fast Ethernet speeds, 802.11n closes the performance gaps that have traditionally limited wireless adoption within the enterprise. Radio enhancements such as MIMO (multiple in, multiple out) ensure consistent application delivery thanks to improvements in reliability and predictability of coverage.

With the performance enhancements that 802.11n brings, it’s no wonder organizations are starting to question whether wireless will play an expanded role within their networks.

Unwiring
The idea of the wireless office is not new. In fact, enterprises building new facilities have long evaluated the possibility of unwiring completely. Although most arrive at the same conclusion – the all-wireless office is a misnomer for the simple fact that you can’t have wireless without wired and that certain applications (e.g. voice) perform better over a wired network. Nonetheless, the introduction of 802.11n has given new life to possibilities of all wireless access.

But let’s remember where this discussion started – IT should evaluate technology from the perspective of opportunity and risk and adopt only when the opportunity is great enough. Before a business can make the leap of faith to what many are hailing as the arrival of the wireless office, it’s important to remember that the role of IT is to build a communications infrastructure that is flexible to meet business requirements for agility.

IT is besieged with requests for new tools and applications to enhance business processes. Few can predict what new applications will emerge, or how those applications will perform across different networks. As a result, IT must provide a communications infrastructure that is flexible enough to meet the requirements of any application that may emerge.

Unification
An all wired, or conversely all wireless network, will be optimized for some, but not all applications. Simply put, a unified wired and wireless network provides the greatest flexibility to support any application. Evaluated in the context of opportunity and risk, IT can not afford the risk of being limited to a single access network, yet can create opportunity through a unified wired and wireless network.

Thus, counter to many recent assertions, the mobility opportunity is not realized by going all wireless, rather by integrating networks to deliver a consistent application experience. The performance improvements ushered in by 802.11n create new opportunities for enhanced business mobility. But lest your business be limited in its ability to incorporate new applications, shift your view of a wireless office to the mobile office.

That office is one where users have consistent application experiences irrespective of their method of connectivity and where IT can decrease operational complexities through common policies and services across any network access. Mobility can be a goldmine of opportunity, but IT must take a practical approach to architecting that opportunity. Only through unification of wired and wireless can the business deliver a truly mobile user experience.

Kozup is a senior manager within the Mobility Solutions team with Cisco. He is responsible for market development and strategy for Cisco’s portfolio of enterprise wireless networking products and solutions.