The Long, Unwired World

Wireless e-Mail: A Safe Bet

Bane, while agreeing with the analysts that something big is on the way, disagrees when he thinks that it will take a lot longer to get here than most experts expect.
He explains it as follows: While a dial tone on a mobile phone was something that anyone could understand, second- and third-generation wireless services are far more complex.
They are complex on at least two levels. First, they are just hard to explain to people who aren't already steeped in technical, industry concepts and jargon. "Try telling a consumer why WAP [Wireless Application Protocol] or GPRS [General Packet Radio Service] will change their lives," says Bane. (See sidebar on standards.)
And second, the technical challenges themselves are daunting. "If you want to deliver a wireless Internet connection to the cell phone," says Bane, "you have to anticipate the most efficient way to present the information in a lousy interface. The trade-offs are enormously complicated."
So Bane thinks that the first wireless application out of the gate will be a familiar one. "Cheap wireless e-mail is a safe bet," he says. "The rest is going to be far more difficult than most people expect."
Art Ash, vice president of strategy and mobile solutions at Inforte, a strategy and systems integration firm in Chicago, is willing to make a few more predictions. "In Europe and Japan, where wireless applications are more prevalent, they have been mostly B2C [business-to-consumer]," says Ash. "I think that in the U.S. we are going to see more wireless action in B2E [business-to-employee] applications which support the mobile workforce."
He adds that these will be spiced up with B2C features to make them more compelling. "Employees are also going to want mobile access to CNN.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and their financial Web site," says Ash.

Trailblazers and Teenagers

Although there isn't a handy crystal ball for gazing into the wireless future, there are a couple of windows well worth looking through. One faces east and the other, west. Europe and Asia, especially Japan, have moved much more quickly to embrace and use wireless messaging applications.
Most of the action here is centered on the youth market — teens paging each other anytime anywhere. Consultants remain somewhat cool to this phenomenon since, while it may be big, it is not the kind of market that will, by itself, translate into lucrative engagements with global 2000 firms.
Some consultancies, however, are taking a look at messaging as something more than adolescent fun. Sapient, in Cambridge, MA, for example, recently built a wireless messaging application for Assertahome, a real estate company in London.

Alan Wexler, vice president at Sapient and the leader of their global wireless practice, agrees with all who say that it is too early to predict what wireless applications will resonate with consumers and businesses. But he says his people are giving it a try.
Sapient has a permanent staff of about 70 "experience modelers." "These are not technically trained folks," he explains, "but, rather, they are interdisciplinary people — anthropologists, sociologists, and ethnographers — whose job is to figure out how real people will actually use new technologies such as wireless communications."
Andrew Doyle, CEO of Assertahome, says real people are already using the wireless application Sapient built for his firm. "We were looking to make home buying a lot easier," says Doyle, "and we saw that the solution could not be a pure Internet one — it had to be multichannel."

Doyle says that in Europe, since TV is already digital and wireless messaging is common, he wanted something that would take advantage of these channels along with the Internet. Sapient convinced him that they could integrate all three.
The application itself is fairly simple — it notifies a potential home buyer the second a suitable property comes on the market. It's something, as real estate gets pricier and harder to find the world over, that almost every buyer wants.

He thinks that these kinds of applications will fuel the demand for wireless infrastructure. "Customers are going to get more demanding," he explains. "They will want richer content, things like graphics and detailed information about neighborhoods, schools, etc. And they are going to want it delivered to a mobile device — a handheld PDA or phone. It just means that we will need fat pipes everywhere."

Diamond's Wireless Wager

This big fat pipe is commonly referred to as 3G or even 4G, for third- or fourth-generation. It promises wireless data speeds that will exceed one megabit per second (current wireless applications generally crawl along at less 20 kilobits per). Wireless carriers around the world are both eager to exploit it and anxious to not get it wrong.
Cluster Consulting, a European strategy consulting firm that merged in November with U.S.-based Diamond Technology Partners, built a business around helping new telecommunications firms navigate these uncertain passages.

"Cluster got started by helping to launch new wireless carrier companies," says Dominic Endicott, partner with the newly formed DiamondCluster International in Chicago. "We did the critical strategy work for Orange in Switzerland, Optimus in Portugal, and Connect in Austria," says Endicott.
Cluster specialized in helping these start-ups figure out how to get and keep customers. Endicott says that the new firm will continue to focus on strategy, but with Diamond now in the picture, there is opportunity to do technology work as well. "Diamond comes at this market more from the IT side," explains Endicott. "'How do you use IT to meet the needs of next-generation wireless users?' So far, strategy consulting remains dominant for us, but we expect that IT will quickly become a significant portion."

He is particularly excited, and also tight-lipped, about some ongoing strategy work with Xfera, a wireless start-up in Spain. "Xfera is one of the new 3G firms," says Endicott. "We think they might be able offer speeds of up to two megabytes per second, which will open the door to many more wireless applications."
But Endicott, like most of his colleagues, is still reluctant to predict exactly what these applications will be. He does say that in North America the firm has developed what he calls "killer apps" around CVM (customer value management). "Our clients here are are Sprint and Bell Mobility [in Canada]," says Endicott. "This CVM application captures gigabytes of data per day that our clients can use to analyze their customer base."

A Practice of Its Own?

Data like this will certainly help wireless carriers understand their customers better, and strategy consulting firms should have plenty of work to do in helping them to sort through it all. But this still doesn't answer the larger question: What is going to drive the wireless boom that almost everyone expects?
The uncertainties here are evident in the varying degrees to which consulting firms have committed resources to a dedicated wireless practice.
Stew Bloom, for example, senior vice president of e-strategy at Mainspring, has helped build a core staff of wireless experts. But the Cambridge, MA, firm doesn't have a wireless practice. "I felt strongly that we should have one practice, and that's consulting," says Bloom.
Mainspring is doing wireless work for clients such as the Principal Financial Group in De Moines, IA. "We have some wireless projects going," says Diane Johnson, vice president of e-business at Principal. "We want to extend many of the features on our Web site to our mobile customers, such as the ability to see and customize their 401(k) plan."

Mercer's Bane says that his firm has over 50 consultants with wireless expertise, but these are part of the company's communications, information, and entertainment practice.
SeraNova, in Edison, NJ, has a mobile enablement practice that consists of about 30 consultants. "If you think about where we were with the 1200-baud modem connection before the Internet wave broke, that is about the stage we are in with wireless today," says Nagaraja Srivatsan, senior vice president for global delivery at SeraNova. I think it will be three to five years before standards issues are resolved and the bandwidth to build compelling applications is available."

Razorfish, the e-services firm, is treating wireless as another delivery channel. "We are not building a separate practice," says Joy Maguire, vice president for wireless and mobility solutions in North America at Razorfish. She says that the New York firm has about 100 people in North America with deep experience in mobile technologies and about the same number in Europe. Wexler has about 30 consultants in Sapient's wireless practice.
At Inforte, Ash says he has about seven wireless strategy experts in his mobile solutions practice. He is also looking to hire a practice area director. "This person would work with me as a business developer, sort of a rainmaker for wireless engagements," says Ash.

Few doubt that the rain will eventually come and bring to blossom the world of wireless consulting engagements. But most also agree that it is difficult to separate the hype from reality, a situation which makes what Mainspring's Bloom has to say particularly compelling. "There has been a lot of discussion in the industry about what wireless means," he says. "So far, the key insights have been pretty uninspiring — things such as 'wireless means no wires.' Everyone is still wondering what the value proposition is."