The Power of Integrated Wireless and Mobile Communication Technologies and Their Impact on the Corporate World

1. Introduction

Many factors are aligning for significant change in communication and collaboration in the corporate world. At a time when competition is global and aggressive, information and communication technologies and tools are expected to be a significant trend for differentiation. The objectives to thrive and survive include improved customer care, cost efficiency and, finally, open innovation (Davis et al., 2010; Veen, 2009).

The constant and fast pace of change brings challenges to business organizations to understand, deploy and massively adopt new information and communication technologies. At the same time, corporations themselves are changing — moving from a strict and formal hierarchical model to ad-hoc virtual teams and networked communities (Durkin & Lokshina, 2015; Picazo-Vela, Gutiérrez-Martinez, & Luna-Reyes, 2011; Veen, 2009).

On the infrastructure side, the progress of integrated wireless and mobile communication technologies has allowed for high quality end-user experiences with acceptable level of usage and efficiency (Davis et al., 2010; Vukovic, Lopez, & Laredo, 2009).

Forthcoming mobile broadband life impacts most homes and corporate environments in ways we can only imagine. It creates new norms and expectations for the next business generation that will utilize integrated wireless and mobile communication technologies to their full potential (Durkin & Lokshina, 2015).

This paper is comprised of eleven sections and is organized as follows:

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  Sections two, three and four discuss the progression and expected trends of wireless and mobile communication technologies.

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  Section five defines new norms and expectations for end-users from the next business generation, created by forthcoming mobile broadband life.

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  Sections six, seven, eight, nine and ten provide scenarios from several different domains to illustrate the power of integrated wireless and mobile communication technologies and their impact on the corporate world.

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  Summary and conclusions are contained in the final section, followed by references.

2. Progression And Expected Trends In Wireless And Mobile Communication Technologies

The development of technologies is not the absolute driver for their usage, deployment and mass adoption. The Gartner hype cycle (Gartner, 2014) affirms this theory and provides an important conceptual framework for understanding how technologies move from initial invention to widespread application, establishing a continuum from getting hyped to the point of inflating expectations to a level of productivity as a final point, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

2014 Gartner hype cycle for emerging technologies

However, the development of technologies is a true enabling force in the field of wireless and mobile communications. Therefore, the progression and expected trends in wireless and mobile communication technologies demonstrate there is a strong correlation between technology innovation, which improves performance (e.g., speed, latency, batteries, displays), and high quality end-user experience.

When considering the mobile world, two technology trends are of importance (Davis et al., 2010; Durkin & Lokshina, 2015):

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  Wireless LAN (WLAN), which came as a natural extension of corporate LAN, initially supporting data services; and

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  Mobile communications, which initially allowed for voice communication outside corporate boundaries.