Bell Labs: Enabling mobile Internet is key challenge for the enterprise

As president of Research and Advanced Technologies at Bell Laboratories, the R&D arm of Lucent Technologies, Dr. Jeffrey Jaffe is charged with helping Lucent's business units develop and deploy new technologies. InfoWorld Senior Analyst Wayne Rash spoke with Jaffe about the work his company is doing to identify and advance the next big advances for network communications in the enterprise. 

InfoWorld: What is going to be the next big thing for the network in the enterprise?

Jaffe: I think that one of the key things is going to be the enablement of the mobile Internet. Everything about the enterprise, the entire value chain that companies face was totally transformed by the Internet, and now that we're having third-generation high-speed data through cellular access, it means that your entire enterprise workforce suddenly becomes untethered, so your sales folks are out there and they can get access to enterprise data off of the server in a secure fashion. That's going to be the next transformation of what IT managers need to worry about for their companies.

InfoWorld: What is going to be required for these IT managers to plan for this?

Jaffe: First and foremost is enabling the applications. In terms of the wireless infrastructure itself, the service providers will be providing very high-speed data capability. And then the enterprises need to make sure that that access is secure; they need to buy data cards for the 3G technology for their PCs. But they'll also have to focus on the applications themselves, the enterprise applications, sales force automation, procurement, making sure that it's enabled for that new infrastructure that's coming from the telecom industry.

InfoWorld: What is required by enterprises to enable this?

Jaffe: Thankfully, a lot of it is just planning and testing; once you have the high-speed wireless link, it should in principle be no worse than a high-speed wired link. It really should be plug-and-play capability. But to get it to really work requires planning the infrastructure, planning the service from the service provider, and making sure that the thing is well tested before it's deployed on a mass scale.

InfoWorld: How big is the security problem and how close is it to solution?

Jaffe: In the last few years [there's been] a substantial increment in what's available in terms of security products: firewalls, intrusion detection devices, anti-virus software, and things like that. In the product space we're in pretty good shape [for security]. Where we need more focus is not in buying a product, but in making sure that systems and networks have had the appropriate security assessments done. Securing an enterprise is not the same thing as buying a product. It has to do with policies, implementation, practices.

InfoWorld: What kinds of changes will the enterprise have to make to implement the necessary security steps?

Jaffe: It's more of an evolution than a revolution. In other words, enterprises have been focused on security for some time now. But when you start enabling yourself into the mobile Internet, it just adds another level of concern. We certainly want to make sure that we don't start getting spam on our cell phones and things like that. That would a disaster, so that would the kinds of things that we need to plan for.

InfoWorld: Isn't that already happening to some extent?