WiFi makes an impact on India Inc

Though WiFi-enabled notebooks haven’t really taken off in India, Akhtar Pasha finds that WiFi and handhelds make a formidable combination when it comes to data capture in manufacturing and retail

Mark Mathias says that hundreds of Simputers could be deployed in a WiFi environment, going by current trends

Smart handheld devices (SHDs) are finding takers in Point of Sale (PoS), manufacturing shop floors, department stores, vehicle fleets, courier services, hospitals, warehouses and in any sphere of business where the work force is mobile and real-time data collection is important. Kaushik Chandra, CTO, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) says, “The sheer portability and simplicity of these SHDs helps make this a reality. SHDs will evolve into programmable devices that are tailor-made for specific applications and ease of use will be the unique selling point.”

PwC believes that there is a huge potential market in e-governance, retail, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing and logistics where there’s a requirement for compact, low-cost computing devices. WiFi on handhelds is a technology that can help solve this business problem. Dr Swami Manohar, CEO, Pico Peta Simputers says, “SHDs could outnumber notebooks in the next 18 months.”

Pervasive WiFi

A WiFi ready notebook costs at least Rs 65,000 (including taxes) and it weighs between 2 and 2.5 kilograms. SHDs are 10 to 20 times lighter than notebooks (113 to 280 grams); they fit into your shirt pocket and start at sub-Rs 10,000 prices.

Many Indian enterprises are trying out handhelds in conjunction with WiFi or GPRS/CDMA networks for wireless data capture. Leonardo Engineering is using PalmOne PDAs and Bluetooth. The company is evaluating WiFi as a substitute for Bluetooth. Nova Nordis is piloting PalmOne PDAs communicating over a CDMA network. Cafe Coffee Day is going to conduct a pilot where PDAs will be used to drastically reduce serving time and errors by beaming orders over a WiFi network.

The simplicity of WLAN technology and dropping prices (just plug in a wireless access point costing Rs 3,000 to Rs 15,000 and you are unwired) are definitely a plus. The problem till now has been that access devices are bulky and expensive. With WiFi going everywhere, that particular problem has been solved, at least from a technology standpoint.

A Smartphone with integrated GPRS or Bluetooth is an alternative to a PDA. That said, the relatively small amount of memory and storage on a Smartphone makes this kind of solution impractical. A handheld is more powerful in terms of processing power, memory and storage and therefore it appears to be the prime candidate for taking WiFi into every nook and cranny of Indian business.

Unwired PDAs

Shivaprasad N V says that Café Coffee Day’s plan to introduce orders transmitted through handheld devices on WiFi would differentiate them from the competition

Getting PDAs to operate in a WiFi network is a two-step process.

• Configuring access points

A PC has to be connected to the access point’s console port using a serial cable. An IT administrator can now use terminal software to view access point configuration screens and change settings, such as radio channel, transmission power and the like. Access points can use DHCP (dynamic host configuration protocol) to automatically get IP addresses from a DHCP server.

• Unwiring the PDA

For this you’ll need a few accessories. A card that supports 802.11b or a compact USB wireless adapter such as D-Link’s DWL 122 (if the PDA should have an USB port) or a CompactFlash Card. Once that’s taken care of it’s as simple as installing the WiFi card drivers on to the PDA, inserting a WiFi CF (Compact Flash) card, going to Start -> Settings -> Connections -> Network adapters and selecting your WiFi card. Then pick ‘Use server-assigned IP address’ and the PDA is now ready to operate in a wireless environment.

• Pilots underway

Café Coffee Day, a division of Amalgamated Bean Coffee Trading Company is a pioneer in the modern coffee business. It also operates a retail chain of coffee shops that are branded as Café Coffee Day outlets. The company is conducting a pilot that will do away with glitches that plague the process of order taking and delivery in a coffee bar. The scenario envisioned is that waiters use smart handheld devices (SHDs) and send your order over a WiFi network to a Point of Sale terminal that, in turn records the order and passes it on to the kitchen. The end result? Your order is executed in a fraction of the time that it usually takes to get a latte to your table.

According to Swami Manohar, smart handheld devices could outnumber notebooks in the next 18 months

Shivaprasad N V, manager-MIS, Café Coffee Day says, “A service like this can differentiate us from the competition.” The company plans to use smart handheld devices (it is still evaluating PalmOne, Casio and a customised handheld) in tandem with a WiFi network. If all goes well, the first phase of Café Coffee Day’s WiFi rollout will end up putting 100 to 150 SHDs into three outlets in Bangalore by July 2004. Phase two will see the pilot being extended to outlets across the country.

Auctioneers and bidders taking part in the Mandi Project in Madhya Pradesh will use Encore Simputers with integrated wireless LAN CF (Compact Flash) cards to connect to a WLAN for placing their bids online. A similar pilot is being tried by the Tobacco Board, again using the Encore Simputer. Mark Mathias, vice president-hardware development, Encore Software says, “You could end up with hundreds of Simputers being deployed in a WiFi environment.”

Wireless SHDs can also be useful for managing hotspots. Sify’s network service engineers have been using notebooks to fix network-related problems at Sify’s iWay wireless base stations. Engineers initiate a telnet session to fix problems. As the service engineer has to climb to reach the equipment, toting a notebook isn’t the easiest way to manage things. Sify has decided to use the Amida Simputer with an USB adapter. Rustom Irani, CTO, Sify. says, “They can do the same work on a smaller and cheaper device that fits into a shirt pocket.”

Chandra of PwC says, “It makes business sense to keep your information updated—the more current the information is, better is the value derived from it.” Delivery personnel can key in quantities of delivered products and send this information to the inventory database in near real-time. This will help a production controller schedule manufacturing to get optimum value from raw materials while keeping inventory levels low. There’s no doubt that the combination of PDAs and wireless, be it WiFi, GPRS or Bluetooth, will have a tremendous impact on how business is conducted in this country.

akhtar@expresscomputeronline.com