Sydney and Melbourne have our first two buildings designed for wireless access. From CFO August 2003.
Welcome to the wireless workspace. One of the most-hyped technologies is becoming a reality in Australia with two entirely wireless buildings – 332 Kent Street, Sydney, and 437 St Kilda Road, Melbourne – being marketed for the first time.
As with everything, it is worth reading the fine print. These claim to be the first buildings to offer wireless communication to all tenants as a building service, but many companies have operated smaller wireless networks for some years. And there are still lots of wires – but more of that later.
Wireless is pitched as the next big thing, the current focus being on public access points. These allow anybody with a wireless computer to gain wireless access, for a fee, to the internet. In fact, they are logging on to a wireless internet service provider.
To date, 25 million wireless products have being shipped worldwide, according to Forrester Research. And four out of five laptop computers these days include the technology.
Most of the press hype on wireless focuses on the public access hotspots. Forrester reckons most of the money being poured into this is being wasted, but the forecaster estimates that more than half of all wireless users will be using it in the office by 2008.
Chris Nicholl, the Australian director at Colliers, says: “This project delivers an optimal service to occupiers and owners and provides benefits to tenants they could never achieve on their own. We call this concept Business Class Wireless Networks.
“It’s not enough anymore for a building to have a state-of-the-art design. It has to be considered technologically advanced, providing usability to occupiers relative to the way contemporary business is conducted.”
Nick Entsch, a business consultant at Colliers International, which is marketing the Kent Street and St Kilda Road properties, says: “It’s a pre-emptive solution to a problem that will occur in about two years’ time.”
Although tenant-installed wireless networks and wireless hotspots are common in today’s marketplace, these applications can present technical problems if installed on a tenant-by-tenant basis.
Entsch says tenants providing their own wireless networks in the building will end up with clashes in channels, meaning none of them will be able to run at full effectiveness. According to Forrester Research, companies are being overrun already by employee Wi-Fi computer peripherals bought for personal use, raising security challenges.
Colliers has teamed with Cisco Systems, a company that has been wireless globally for two years, in establishing the wireless networks in the new buildings. Brad Engstrom, consulting systems engineer at Cisco, says:
“It has made a lot of common business situations a lot more efficient.”
At meetings, for example, executives can access any files needed and e-mail documents around the room. “Once when we had a meeting we used to walk away with action plans. Now it is done in the meeting.”
In a long meeting, Engstrom says, someone may be needed only for 10 minutes out of an hour. They can keep working for the remainder of the time.
“Also, it allows people to move around the building and work together, and still have access to everything.”
But going wireless does not banish cables, according to Engstrom. People who don’t move still have cables and fixed desks. Printers have cables. Anyone who uses a device that needs power, such as a PC, is cabled.
But a wireless network allows, for example, mobile desks. Teams of people working on projects can easily group together with their laptops.
Entsch says that tenants are starting to ask about wireless, partly as a result of the publicity for the buildings he is marketing.
Developers are keeping an eye on the technology. David van Aanholt, chief operating officer at the property investment trust Macquarie Goodman, sees wireless becoming common practice within 36 months. “It needs to be economically viable,” he says. “If the added benefit is in there for nothing, they [tenants] will take it.”
One company that has paid for the technology is Linde Gas, which went wireless across six warehouse and distribution centres with Cisco technology.
Using handheld devices, the company can track the storage and handling of individual gas cylinders as they are transported across Australia. According to the company, wireless working has already delivered efficiencies.
Perhaps the future of wireless industrial and business parks can be seen in the Norwest Business Park at Castle Hill, in outer Sydney. It covers 377 hectares and is home to more than 320 companies and 15,000 staff. Sales and marketing manager Bill Parker forecasts the park will double in size by 2007 and house more than 30,000 workers.
Eight years ago, when Cathay Pacific moved its international data centre to the park, a fibre-optic network was rolled out. But the partners found that smaller companies – 60 per cent of tenants are SMEs – couldn’t afford to join the network.
Now the fibre-optics are being used by Link Innovations and its partner, Uecom, to build a wireless network. Wireless dishes the size of two small food tins have sat on the roofs of eight buildings since October 2002.
Parker says that the wireless infrastructure delivers a cost-effective broadband solution to local tenants. Any building in the line of sight can have access to the network.