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WAVE 2001 in Las VegasMay 14 to 17, 2001, Aladdin Resort
Recently, Pen Computing Magazine attended WAVE 2001 in Las Vegas (where I was a judge in the Best-Wireless-Application contest). Billed as a
"Wireless Alliances and Vision Exchange," the four day conference, presented by
Cingular Wireless (which now includes
the former BellSouth Wireless that had once been known as RAM Mobile Data) certainly lived up to
its billing of being "the center of the
wireless universe" for those four days.
1- Jump to the next
curve.
2- Don't worry, be crappy.
3- Churn, baby, churn
4- Break down barriers
5- Make envangelists, not sales
6- Let a thousand flowers bloom
7- Eat like a bird, poop like a elephant
8- Think digital, act analog
9- Do not ask people to do something you wouldn't do.
10- Do not let the bozos grind you down!
WAVE 2001 offered several dozen workshops and breakout sessions. Here is the gist
of some that I attended:
Tarantino then talked about some if Cingular's current and upcoming services and
tools, including a WML browser for 900 series RIM devices where each has a http
address for push apps. He stressed the importance of end-to-end solutions and
also some of the practical aspects like how will customers of an application be
charged?
The most informative part of the presentation was a recap of the several
generations of middleware solutions over the years. The first generation worked
well and made for a good user interface, but it was expensive and complex. The
second generation began 95 when TCP/IP stacks became available on wireless
devices. However, they were designed for desktop. Third generation from 98 on was
based on WAP and HDML. It was widely accepted but people never really fell in love with
WAP. This generation uses application servers, and XSL style sheets handle
formatting for different devices. The fourth generation, launched in 2001, is
based on Java. Optimised for wireless and a full-blown platform for distributed
processing. Java app server sends to Cingular Java gateway. Gateway can deliver
apps to devices. Available Q4 of 2001. Storefront provides many ways to charge
for Services.
Tarantino also mentioned that the launching of GPRS (General Packet Radio
Service) platforms later this year
"will open things up for Palm and Pocket PC."
Tuesday's luncheon speaker was Dale Irvine, Firm Director/CIO, West Sector
Technology, of Deloitte & Touche. He talked about how his company has embraced
wireless and how wireless messaging has become ubiquitous at Deloitte & Touche.
Evening entertainment consisted of a trip to the neighboring Luxor to catch a
performance by the famous and exceedingly weird Blue Man Group.
Yankowski then made the case for Palm in the enterprise and, in the process,
offered some interesting tidbits of information and general observations. Mobile
computing will drastically alter the Enterprise. The Meta Group, for example,
predicts that the enterprise segment will be over 50% of handheld market by 2004.
To illustrate, Yankowski mentioned that Palm sold 15,000 wireless devices to
Sears, that 80% of all Palms are synchronized at work, that 40% of Palms are paid
for or subsidized by companies, and that there are 10,000 Palm apps versus just
300 for the Pocket PC platform. The question "Why Palm in the enterprise?"
Jankowski answered as follows: It is a safe choice, a broad alliance, an open
platform, offers great ease of use, has the lowest cost of ownership, and
provides technology leadership.
Jon Bostrom, who was chief architect of the Java NTT DoCoMo implementation, gave an overview of
Java, from the Enterprise edition all the way down to Java Card as small as SD card.
Neat thing with Java is that when you are done using an app, you simply ditch it. Bostrom stressed that
"it is not about the bandwidth, it is about the service" and mentioned the great succcess of NTT DocoMo despite ist slow 9.6kbps service.
In this session Mr. Burns provided an informative overview of where Palm stands, what
initiatives Palm is involved in, and what the future will hold. The presentation came
perhaps across as a bit defensive about Palm's ability to make it big in the enterprise.
Salient points mentioned:
Case study of what SUN did when they needed a wireless device for all of their field
engineers. The device was to be based on some of their core technologies.
After much evaluation, SUN chose the Symbol 2700 rugged PPC (60 Mhz MIPS and 16MB
RAM) with custom snap-on keyboard that Symbol built. Sun bought the first 3,000
keyboards. As far as the operating system went, SUN chose JAVA on Red Hat Linux.
Why not CE? There was a performance problem with the slow 60MHz processor. Why not Palm? Not enough
heap and stack. Symbol developed a Linux OS implementation for the device in 65
days. Sun's internal project team was only three and the challenge was to make it
all work together: Symbol hardware, Red Hat embedded Linux, JavaSoft, Aether for
fulfillment and wireless aggregation and support and billing.
lnterlink developed applications in Java. Mr. Richards praised Symbol for
a great job and speedy implementation (Project idea May 2000, got going Summer 2000, and deployment started in May 2001).
Lessons: build a small cross-functional team but don't seek consensus beyond
that. Once you have a concept, do it!
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This was an entirely different affair from the
first conference in 1996 that drew some 40 attendees to Newark Airport. Cingular
pulled out all the stops and put on a dazzling show in the equally dazzling
Aladdin hotel and resort on the Las Vegas Strip. Las Vegas hotels usually barely have a good modem
connection because the hotel wants you to be in the casino and not in the room. I was therefore quite surprised to
find high speed Internet access AND a computer in every room. Anyway, the conference facilities, the
sessions, the presenters, and, last but not least, the entertainment and
extracurricular activities were all first class. 
The MC throughout the event was Cingular's
eloquent Vice President for Wireless Solutions, Janet Boudris. She was assisted
by a wisecracking cartoon developer from the future named "Pac-D" (Packet Data).
Boudris pulled off this interaction with an onscreen character with wit and
surprising ease. In her initial words, she pointed out that
business-to-business e-commerce is vastly greater than its
business-to-consumer counterpart--a great opportunity. Addressing wireless'
seemingly slow adoption, she mentioned that new technologies usually take about
25 years to reach 50% penetration and that wireless is right on track. She also
offered the wisecrack that "mobile professional is the catch-all term for those
who are not actually fixing anything." Boudris cautioned that there are still
plenty of loose ends that need to be tied together in order to form the kinds of
end-to-end solutions that will allow m-business to really take off. She
mentioned the importance of location-based services as an example of
applications that could provide great value. She again cautioned that wireless
speeds will continue to lag behind wireline connections and that this will
require different and optimized applications. She then presented Cingular's path
from its current offerings to higher speed 3G networks, essentially a path from
the current Mobitex to GPRS and then Wideband CDMA. 
Guy Kawasaki, best known for having been Apple's
chief evangelist during the early Macintosh days, made a terrific presentation
that sort of bridged stand-up comedy with business acumen. Guy shared with the
audience the ten rules for revolutionaries. They are:
Day two began with a presentation by Palm
Computing's CEO, Carl Yankowski. Yankowski opened with a great video of Dave
Letterman in a spoof of the Palm commercial where a young woman in a train beams
a man in another train her contact info. Letterman re-enacts the scene, but
the note on his Palm reads, "In your dreams, creapo!"
Yankowski mentioned that his company was working
on ARM-based Palm OS 5 and had issued a OS license to Garmin, which will have
its own hadheld. He sees wireless as an enabler rather than a solution. The next
generation of Mobitex Palm Vllx will have a SD card slot and a nice silver body.
The device, which Jankowski repeatedly flashed to the audience, looked a bit like
the new Sony Clie 610/710. Yankowski said that WAVE attendees are among the few to have seen
the device. In more general terms, he said that screen size will be very
important as voice and data merge. The ARM-based 5.0 will be ready "when pipes
are ready." It includes multimedia, rich music, video, and will support a bunch
of SD I/O cards including a digital camera. He said SD cards will have capacities
of 1 gig next year. He expect new enterprise products and solutions for the second
half of 2001. Palm had 1.4 billion sales last nine months. The new Palm VII, the i700, is
always on, has instant messaging, universal email, notification. Palm will offer
320 x 320 screens "soon." Yankowski ecxpects smaller devices with larger screens. Organic screens are on
the horizon, and perhaps foldable keyboards which are on drawing board today. He
mentioned that there were 150,000 registered Palm developers, and that Palm had
a "personal companion" market share of 76% worldwide in 2000 (per IDC), as well
as a 90% US retail share in March of 2001. Of Fortune 1000 companies, Palm
powered devices are on 85% of their standards list.