Wednesday, 15 October 2008

1 Million SMBs to Adopt 802.11n Early

Retail, real estate, warehousing and transportation are among the SMB (small and medium business) market segments that could prove fertile ground for adoption of 802.11n equipment, assuming vendors can find the right channels to reach them, says ABI Research.

“Small businesses tend to buy from retailers, office equipment stores, and select value-added resellers,” says Stan Schatt, vice president, ABI Research.

“Small businesses tend to buy small numbers of devices and trade them in more frequently than large companies. They also tend to be far less knowledgeable about technology and standards than large companies with dedicated IT personnel. The result is that small businesses are likely to buy 802.11n products while they are in draft status and deploy them immediately.”

Many of those businesses will have employed Wi-Fi already, so what – apart from its greater speed and throughput – will prompt them to upgrade to “n”?

According to ABI, one trigger is related to PC replacement cycles: increasingly, when computers are updated, the new models will include 802.11n as a standard built-in feature.

Several characteristics specific to the retail, real estate, warehouses and transportation vertical markets make them especially likely to benefit from 802.11n’s new abilities. Warehouse operators have had problems with interference using conventional 802.11g. 802.11n’s MIMO technology should reduce interference and make it possible to use Wi-Fi-based RTLS software.

According to ABI, retail SMB establishments could benefit from the greater coverage offered by 802.11n; and real estate, increasingly using Wi-Fi to transmit graphic images of homes, will very likely add video applications as soon as they become practical. Deploying 802.11n will provide enough bandwidth to handle these tasks. These businesses will be “low-hanging fruit” for those vendors, distributors and retail channels that specialize in serving the SMB segment.