WLANs: What They Mean For SMBs

As part of Forrester's Business Technographics research for 2006, Forrester surveyed 818 network equipment decision-makers and 521 mobile technologies and services decision-makers at North American small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) about their wireless local area network (WLAN) adoption plans. We found that, not surprisingly, the larger SMBs have the most interest in wireless networks — and that they are focusing their investments first on data networks before looking into those for voice. Given SMBs' focus on data networks, vendors must market solutions to SMBs that speak to the need for robust capabilities yet minimize management and deployment complexity and come at a reasonable cost. More cutting-edge technologies such as integrated voice and data networking products and those products taking advantage of new standards may resonate with the smallest segment of SMBs, which are more prone to use voice over WLAN, and mirror consumers in adoption of wireless networking technology.