Cisco Cisco Wireless Control System Version 4.0 White Paper

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Building Business Agility and Efficiency
with Network-Powered Mobility

The promise of wireless mobility has encouraged IT executives to seriously consider its many business benefits.

But before making the leap, chief information officers seek to clearly understand the full impact that wireless LAN

mobility services will have on their organizations. Common questions focus on the ongoing management of existing

and emerging mobile technologies, the impact of mobility on enterprise security, and the cost. To address these

challenges, a growing number of companies are working with Cisco

Systems to turn existing infrastructures into

intelligent infrastructures that unify wireless and wired networks. Organizations can then securely and cost-

effectively extend mobility services across a variety of mediums and devices. This enterprisewide architecture

approach reduces operational costs and security threats as it increases the user’s ability to access resources

wirelessly. Read further to see how Cisco is helping to build business agility and efficiency with network-powered

mobility services such as location services, advanced security services, guest access services, and voice services.

LOCATION SERVICES: PROMOTING ASSET VISIBILITY

Today, many IT organizations are being asked to transform IT from a cost center to a business enabler. Network-powered mobility services

can help deliver measurable benefits, especially when they aid departmental interaction within an organization. For example, for years

Bronson Methodist Hospital in Kalamazoo, Michigan lost time, productivity and money whenever employees from any department had to

leave their normal duties to go hunting for wheelchairs. Bronson’s IT networking department, the applications group, and the nursing staff

worked together to address this challenge and transformed the process of finding assets with Cisco

location services. Today, patients wait

no more than a few minutes for a wheelchair, and Bronson saves $28,000 a month by eliminating manual searches. Because Bronson has

put an overall IT architecture into place, it is easier for the hospital to expand these services in the future by tagging other devices such as

hospital beds, infusion pumps and more. Location services can, of course, benefit any enterprise. Tagging corporate assets such as

handheld devices, laptops, and servers not only helps prevent theft, it also saves IT departments hundreds of hours of unproductive time

spent tracking these assets.

Market research firm, IDC predicts that wireless-enabled laptop PCs will represent 100 percent of laptop PC sales in 2007 and by

2009 there will be more than 878 million mobile workers worldwide—Worldwide WLAN Semiconductor 2005–2009 Forecast, IDC,

April 2005 and Worldwide Mobile Worker Population 2005–2009, Forecast and Analysis, IDC, October 2005

In a commissioned case study on mobility services prepared by Forrester Consulting for Cisco Systems, Forrester interviewed

organizations and found that location tracking provided quantifiable benefits in terms of the reduction of time spent locating assets

and a reduction in the cost to replace missing assets. For the study, Forrester conducted a series of in-depth interviews with 12

organizations. The ROI for a composite company was 55 percent, with a breakeven point of 16 months after deployment—Forrester

Consulting, The Total Economic Impact of Deploying Mobility Services, April 21, 2006.