IS Director Bill Tomcsanyi’s initial plan last year was to implement a wireless network beginning in the emergency department at Torrance Memorial Medical Center. The more he looked at then-current security safeguards, the efficiencies his clinicians and administrators could realize, and the relatively low cost to install the network, the more he thought of enveloping the entire hospital and other buildings on campus, which is what he did. "[Wireless] is absolutely an integral part of our five-year information technology plan," says Tomcsanyi. "In the end we’re providing faster patient care and eliminating all of the things that could lead to errors."

Once CIOs have an idea of what they want, the next challenge is to quantify the capital outlay and the expected benefits—but don’t expect to produce hard numbers. "We haven’t been able to quantify why these networks are worth making the investment," says Joel Conover, a research director with research firm Current Analysis. Instead, the benefits are mostly soft, such as increased productivity and efficiency because users can go anywhere (conference rooms, outdoor patios, the cafeteria) and tap into the network if there’s a wireless access point (AP) in range. And even without hard ROI, some CIOs find adequate value. "[Our users] can stay connected to Lotus Notes and the CRM and ERP packages, and can cleanly and easily move and stay connected consistently," says Steve McDonald, VP of IT of Optimus Solutions, a $92 million integrator and reseller of software and hardware. McDonald has covered some 25,000 square feet of space with nine APs using 802.11b/g networking capabilities.

But Ellen Daley, principal analyst with Forrester Research, sums up the consensus of today’s WLAN deployments: "For primary data access to every network in the enterprise, [Wi-Fi] is really an additive—not a replacement [for the wired network]. And it’s an additive cost." Payback figures from WLAN vendors are a bit rosier. On a typical installation using 802.11a, b or g, for example, Nortel claims that organizations can realize a 2 percent to 3 percent productivity improvement for users and a payback on the WLAN investment in a year’s time.

Write the Book

The industrious cube dweller or visiting contractor who plugs his wireless router into an Ethernet port probably doesn’t have evil intentions. But it’s up to you to make it clear to every user how bad such behavior can be: This rogue access point now sits behind the outward-facing protection of the firewall and can’t be detected by most intrusion-detection systems, and somebody sniffing the air with a simple, inexpensive handheld device or wireless-enabled notebook could lock on to the signal and have full access to the corporate network. "You have to define the policy for your wireless LAN: when people can use it, the restrictions on use, or guest-access use for consultants and partners," says Daley.