Wi-Fi Replaces Ethernet in Enterprise

Given that less than one-third of enterprise employees work in large corporate headquarters any more, most work these days is in branch offices, remotely from the field or at home offices. And of those who do work in headquarter facilities, 48 percent spend at least 20 percent of their work time away from their primary workplace.

Enterprises are also adopting the idea of “hoteling” or other nontraditional office setups, where mobile workers use shared desk and office space when working in a main corporate site.

All of those trends are driving higher wireless usage, both Wi-Fi in buildings and mobility outside buildings. In fact, say researchers at the Yankee Group, wired Ethernet ports go unused about 50 percent of the time, in part because workers are traveling or telecommuting.

So it comes as no surprise that use of in-office WLANs is increasing at enterprise sites.

Just three years ago, 43 percent of enterprises did not offer any WLAN access in the office to workers. Today, the number of enterprises not offering Wi-Fi has dropped to only 11 percent of enterprises.

In three more years, 93 percent of enterprise sites will use Wi-Fi and only 7 percent of enterprises will be no-Wi-Fi zones. Wireless-heavy organizations, where more than 40 percent of employees use 802.11 as their main access technology, have gone from 12 percent of enterprises to almost a third. In three years, 56 percent of enterprises will use wireless as the primary connection.

Wi-Fi-enabled laptops are the tool of choice for accessing in-office WLANs, with around 35 percent of enterprise workers having such devices currently. In the next two years, that number is expected to jump to 42 percent.

Also, almost 60 percent of enterprise IT executives say their employees are demanding smart phones such as BlackBerries and iPhones, devices with native support for Wi-Fi.

Today, around 20 percent of enterprise employees use BlackBerries and seven percent of employees use iPhones. Enterprises expect this installed base to reach around 30 percent for BlackBerry and 11 percent for iPhone by about 2011.

So it is possible that some workers could have as many as three or four Wi-Fi devices sitting at their desks.

As for wired Ethernet in the access layer, one has to wonder how much longer it will get as much attention as it has it the past, though increased use of IP telephony and video will continue to drive wired network use.

As enterprises rolled out IP telephony in the early to mid-2000s, they used the opportunity to upgrade older, incumbent LAN infrastructure, such as hubs or basic Layer 2 switches. However, 33 percent of enterprises now say they are interested in replacing as much as half of their fixed-line telephony installed base with mobile phones in the next two years.

Some enterprises even see high-speed 802.11n (with throughput as much as 300 Mbps) as an alternative to deploying higher-speed, but less flexible, gigabit Ethernet to desktops.

Forty percent of enterprises polled recently by the Yankee Group said they had no plans to deploy Gigabit Ethernet to desktop users. This means many enterprises are foregoing the next generation of speed upgrades on the wired side for high-speed WLAN.

All of those changes also mean that a hard-wired network access architecture, built for rows of cubes with 90 percent-plus occupancy, is a waste of resources, Yankee Group says. IP