1. Most mainstream activity to date (70%) has been concerned with mobile office, particularly mobile email. Justifying pilots in this area has been relatively easy based on "gut feel", but the business case for large scale deployment is much more difficult to make as many of the benefits are "soft" in nature.
2. The rapidly evolving technology landscape has led to decision making uncertainty and reluctance to commit. Early adopters highlight a need to consider three key wireless network technologies (GPRS, WiFi and 3G) along with at least four different device classes and a plethora of device operating systems.
3. The perceived operational difficulties remain a concern. Almost three quarters of adopters (71%) regard security as a key area still to be dealt with and about half highlight the challenge of device management. Such issues have often not been fully addressed in the pilot stage.
4. IT departments are busy enough already. Project backlogs in other areas have accumulated over the past two years as a result of the economic downturn. Allocating resource to manage and implement large scale production rollouts of wireless against the backdrop of the other three challenges has therefore been difficult to justify.

But business cases are becoming easier to make
Techniques that allow the building of business cases based on soft as well as hard financial benefits are emerging. So too are case studies from organisations that have already committed to large scale rollouts of wireless. In addition, an increased emphasis on wireless access to core business applications strengthens the overall investment case.

And the technology fog is lifting
Service providers are pulling together coherent multi-network access services that remove the uncertainty at a network level. The device space remains dynamic, but areas of stability are emerging around the RIM Blackberry and Microsoft platforms. The number of "appropriate" corporate devices available is set to increase in the second half of 2004.

The operational issues are also being dealt with
Organisations have already grappled with the problem of users connecting to potentially "dirty" networks whilst on the road and though certainly not complacent, know that much of this learning can be applied to wireless in general. From a systems management perspective, all major vendors in this space have all extended their solutions to deal with small form factor wireless devices.

But IT departments are still busy so activity will increase smoothly rather than explosively
Whilst investment in cellular wireless continues and over three quarters (76%) of early adopters now have a formal strategy in place, experience in other technology areas tells us that the lag time between investment and aggressive deployment can be significant. This lag period also varies considerably according to the size and culture of organisations. With this in mind, we therefore do not predict a short term "explosion" in activity in the market, but indications are positive and we expect stories of large scale commitments to become increasingly more common over the remainder of 2004 and through 2005.