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And so Johnsonville brought in a wireless LAN -- at the time, a cutting-edge technology. "We took a leap of faith," Gilson says. Now when an employee scans a piece of inventory, the data travels over the wireless LAN and updates the database instantly. "If we went back to the batch scanners, I'd have a mutiny on my hands," he says.
The latest wireless standard to be approved, 802.11g, in June 2003, dramatically boosted wireless LAN throughput to 54 Mbps. This increased speed helped sway $500 million Deaconess Health System Inc. in Evansville, Ind., to deploy a wireless LAN.
Two years ago, Deaconess CIO Mike Neeley was looking for ways to help doctors do their jobs better. The hospital hoped to improve doctor-patient interactions and make its 275 physicians more efficient as they moved throughout the hospital, meeting with patients and reviewing X-rays, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans and charts. The thought of being able to pull down patient records on the spot using a handheld device connected via a wireless LAN was "really exciting," says Dr. Greg Hindahl, associate director of family practice and residency.
The problem, though, was that X-rays and MRIs are massive files, and an 802.11b wireless LAN transmitting data at 11 Mbps or slower couldn't handle them well. But 802.11g removed this barrier, prompting the hospital to give wireless a try. Now the hospital has access points on all five floors. Physicians carry tablet-sized devices when making rounds. They can also connect to the Internet, allowing them, for example, to obtain a disabled parking permit from a state department of motor vehicles for a patient. "It saves us time, and it saves our patients time," Dr. Hindahl says.
A Tough Case for the Office
While successful wireless LAN projects aren't difficult to find, the technology hasn't hit the mainstream yet. Part of the problem is that wireless proponents have struggled to make a compelling business case for the technology in the office environment. CIOs are still hedging their bets.
Wireless LANs rarely replace a hard-wired network, except in those cases where wiring is cost-prohibitive, such as in older structures, where it is difficult to run cable. Otherwise, adding a wireless LAN to an existing network is hard to cost-justify, even though office workers may want it, says Ken Dulaney, vice president of mobile computing at Stamford-Conn.-based research firm Gartner Inc.
For example, although the $128 million Houston Astros Baseball Club teamed with Time Warner Cable to deploy a wireless network in its stadium, giving fans access to the Internet and food service vendors the ability to transmit orders from the stands, it didn't consider deploying one at its office. The office, on a separate network from the stadium, is in a new facility that's laden with data ports. "There is not enough value to warrant the [wireless] infrastructure required," CIO Brad Bourland says.
Smaller projects can be an easier sell. Johnsonville's Gilson says he added wireless to his offices after seeing success in the warehouse, but there are only two wireless LAN access points in the company's 14,000-square-foot office. Employees are encouraged to stay connected to the wired network when at their desks because the access points can be easily overloaded. But they can use wireless in meeting rooms. "It's convenient and not a huge investment," Gilson says.
Hendrick Motorsports just spent $10,000 adding wireless to its corporate campus, which has 15 buildings on 78 acres, including engine and chassis shops, as well as office space. Many of the buildings are older, making it expensive to install additional cable, and many of its 300 PC users are engineers who move about the campus. Thus, the investment made sense. "It gives them the flexibility to pull up information without fumbling around for a network jack that is hot," says Matt Cochran, Hendrick's network manager.
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