Answering the Mobile IT Call

SPEAKING ON A CELL PHONE from his Dallas hotel room on a wet Friday morning, Håkan Liedman, global CIO of Swedish telecommunications giant L.M. Ericsson, is still buzzing after one of the most provocative meetings of his 20-month tenure.

"We had a serious discussion here yesterday," he says. "Perhaps we won't need to have any traditional personal computers one and a half years from now. We wouldn't need them if all the information we want is accessible from our WAP [wireless application protocol] phones or PDAs or whatever. Hotel business centers, cybercafes and other public terminals could take care of the rest."

Ericsson may be on the cutting edge of what will undoubtedly be the biggest challenge for IT executives since the birth of the PC more than 20 years ago. Managing worldwide systems these days means providing 24/7 access to more than PCs and laptops. Users want and need access to e-mail and other services from their cell phones or any other communications device that suddenly becomes the rage. The infinitely increasing choice of end user devices and the accompanying demands for instant information are among CIOs' biggest challenges. This new frontier requires rethinking the structure of applications and the network.

Just ask Ericsson, which, as a leading handheld manufacturer, is feeling the pressure to provide cell phone access to global systems now. Until recently the company's IT enterprise was a confused collection of disparate systems mostly performing back-office roles. But Liedman is trying to transform that infrastructure into a cohesive network that helps drive business and showcases the company's new mobile Internet technologies.

With Nokia outselling Ericsson in the handset market, investors are beginning to put the heat on Ericsson. The company thus is trying to carve a niche as the pioneer of the next generation of mobile Internet devices, including its recently launched WAP phones and planned full-multimedia terminals. Liedman needs to prove -- inside and outside the company -- that the mobile Internet really can work.

"Most customer-facing people in Ericsson have a combination of mobile phones, WAP devices and PDAs," says Juliette Ward, a senior consultant in the Mobile group at Ovum, a London-based industry analysis company. "There is a real need to get these people up to speed with mobile technologies so that they can talk the same language and see what customers really want. It's a big opportunity, and they're as out there as any in the business today." An Ericsson spokesman says at least 80 percent of employees have mobile phones.

Liedman has already targeted a range of trial mobile applications. "We are now just rolling out the first solutions, but there's a lot more testing going on," he says. "By early spring our WAP phones will have a powerful portfolio of services with direct access to many of our backbone applications."

You've Got Cell Mail

In Sweden, Liedman is testing the WAP platform for basic corporate services -- like e-mail with a WAP interface to Microsoft's Outlook, calendars and agendas -- on the internal network. More tailored mobile services have also been developed. In the United Kingdom, about 50 managers and field agents are testing mobile WAP and laptop access to specific customer billing information so that they can brief themselves before client visits.

"The next stage will be the Ericsson Mobiliser," reveals Liedman. "This allows users to create their own portals so that we can deliver information tailored for each person. Then we will be able to introduce many more applications." The Mobiliser software gives users access to Microsoft Outlook over WAP from their mobile phones or PDAs.

Behind these trials lies Ericsson's fast-developing global information network, which will ultimately feed the mobile services. The Ericsson intranet currently supports some 75,000 PCs plus Unix users by processing 135,000 e-mails, 7 terabytes of data and 300GB of Internet downloads each day. Employees increasingly hook up to this intranet from different locations using a Virtual Office application running on laptops and desktops, and work as if they were at their desks.

"They've taken some important leaps in technology and come to grips with the intranet platform," observes Ward. "The transformation is quite dramatic. There's a lot of very good information available, and it has led to a much less secretive approach to how the organization is run."

Biggest CIO Problem

Liedman contends that it is essential to prepare the corporate IT infrastructure now for mass mobility. "Making sure that existing systems are ready for a mobile world is going to be one of the biggest problems you'll have as a CIO," he warns. "It's not the technology stuff that will be the issue. The problem will be with implementation and with securing enough resources to make it happen."

Part of the challenge of providing remote access to a corporate system is to standardize the information infrastructure. Highly federal in structure, Ericsson's global operations have traditionally been a collection of IT kingdoms unto themselves. The result was inconsistency, incompatibility and division around the world.

That's changing fast. Liedman has encouraged most operations to adopt standard systems to further centralize and standardize the infrastructure and enable remote access.

The new standard architecture includes SAP's R/3 enterprise resource planning system for operational information, a modified version of Microsoft Office and Scala, an ERP system for small companies from Amsterdam-based Scala Global Systems.

Liedman has also set up a global infrastructure company with responsibility for the global corporate network and the management of hefty data centers around the world. That should help slash the number of systems from 12,000 to 6,000 over three years. It should also cut IT overhead by 10 percent a year. Most important, it provides a common platform on which to build a mobile future.

In his efforts to pioneer mobile IT across the global company, Liedman has already learned lessons about moving to a mobile world. That school of hard knocks has yielded a five-word alert for his colleagues: "Prepare now, before it booms."