April Issue of the Taos Newsletter: Wireless Networking

Inteview with Ginna Raahauge,
Director of Worldwide IT and Real Estate, PalmSource, Inc.

Taos: To start, tell us a little about your company and your organization.

Ginna: PalmSource, Inc. is the world's leading supplier of operating system software for handheld computers and smartphones. The Palm OS® platform established the modern handheld market in 1996 and today is used on more handhelds than all other systems combined ( IDC, personal companions, April 2002). Known for its flexibility and ease of use, the Palm OS platform is the foundation for more than 30 million handhelds and smartphones. These include Palm Powered™ products made by Aceeca, AlphaSmart, Fossil, Foundertech, Garmin, GSPDA, HuneTec, Kyocera, Lenovo, palmOne, PerComm, Samsung, Sony, Symbol, and Tapwave. Palm OS has the industry's most active developer community, which has produced more than 20,000 software titles—many times the number available for any other handheld platform.

The PalmSource IT team is responsible for all worldwide infrastructure and works closely with the Engineering Systems team to manage the infrastructure of all source code development. Since our primary product, the Palm OS, requires wireless solutions to be built for our licensees, we are required to be very aggressive in our IT services. We have deployed wireless and Bluetooth in both our Headquarters (Sunnyvale) and our France R&D location. In the next 30 days we are upgrading our wireless to 802.11g which will also include A turbo capabilities.

Taos: What user requirements drove your widespread adoption of wireless technologies?

Ginna: Our primary product development drives the internal requirements quite heavily, as well as our progressive user base. We need to prove our products internally through QA testing, and have also implemented some security policies that require our conference rooms and visitors to use our wireless LAN (WLAN). This helps segregate and protect our internal network and IP.

Taos: How did you approach the cost/benefits analysis of using wireless throughout your organization?

Ginna: Again, since this is one of our core components within our product development it was an explicit requirement, and considered normal business practice. However, we did do a cost/benefit analysis to select our hardware. That included looking for access points that would provide 2-3 different bands within the same box, in-line power source, the ability to create multiple networks within the same access point, and authentication for 802.1x for security controls.

Taos: What productivity benefits have you seen from the wireless technology you have deployed?

Ginna: Since we have made the security decision to segregate our conference rooms, public areas, and visitor spaces onto a separate network, we have been able to optimize our LAN ports. We have saved money on data drops as we don’t require additional ports to be wired or “heated” for conference rooms. When employees need network access they can get there through VPN without having to use a cable to connect. And, our licensees, auditors, and vendors can have easy access to the Internet to access their own networks.

Taos: What benefits are the users reporting from their perspective?

Ginna: Efficiency is the benefit we hear most often. Speed will be our next benefit as we upgrade to the 802.11g and A turbo bands. Our latest laptop purchases have wireless built in, so the users can move from the LAN in the offices into a conference room seamlessly. The laptops switch onto the WLAN as they move into the conference room and they only need to VPN to regain access to their working documents, email, etc. We also have a multi-PDA environment that uses both our WLAN and Bluetooth to push email to the PDA’s. So if they aren’t using their laptops, they are using their PDA’s throughout the office and conference areas to stay “connected.”

Taos: How were user representatives involved in the development and test of wireless at your company?

Ginna: Whenever we get ready to deploy a new infrastructure technology, we always take a cross selection of users for beta test. This includes our marketing, administrative, and engineering users, so that we can get a comprehensive sampling of user experience from the non-technical to techie-guru.

Taos: How do you make use of PDAs in your wireless environment?

Ginna: Our PDA environment is extensive as many of our users have multiple PDA’s to support our licensees. We also provide feedback to our licensees for the user experience of each product as we use it in our own environment. Today, we have strong requirements to get our corporate email pushed to these devices which some require 802.11b and others use the carrier networks (primarily CDMA).

Taos: What wireless technologies did you use for laptop systems and for PDA class systems?

Ginna: At this time, we are using both Visto and GoodLink to push email to our many devices. Since we have the requirement to VPN from the WLAN for authentication, our devices require a VPN client. We are testing and looking to license a VPN solution by Certicom to allow network access for our internal web services onto the PDA devices.

Taos: Why were those particular technologies chosen?

Ginna: We use a variety of criteria to make our selections. There is a heavy focus on security, and we scrutinize our solution provider infrastructure. We chose a mixed license environment for email due to the variety of devices that we have to support. GoodLink does a wonderful job with the user interface and is a very secure solution for our Sprint, AT&T, and Cingular Treo users. For our other carriers and 802.11b devices, Visto is our choice. Visto is also very secure with emails. For our VPN solution, Certicom is one of our top choices as they have solutions for all versions of our PalmOS.

Taos: What were the gotchas or the areas where you ran into troubles, and how would you advise your peers as they go through the adoption of wireless for their environments?

Ginna: Build a business case to support the implementation and define the service levels that are going to be expected. Once that has been done, plan your coverage areas for access point very carefully. We have run into challenges in the past with poor coverage due to building layout (support columns) and office configurations (hard wall offices vs. cubicles). Any hardware provider should be able to give you proposals on what they would recommend and then you can compare them to each other. Clearly define the security policies around a WLAN and device support standards. We have a multi device environment due to our core product, but standards are always easier to manage and support.

Taos: On the subject of security, what specific concerns did you have about your wireless network and how did you address them?

Ginna: First, we were concerned with “wardriving” - users that would jump onto our network from outside the building – so we tuned the access points to only provide signal within our building and on our floors of operations.

Second, in our opinion, standard WEP encryption on 802.11b is not adequate, so we require users to use VPN to access the internal network or web services. For the upgrade to 802.11g and A turbo we are still going to require VPN until we can confirm all of the new stated encryption functionality.

Third, in an effort to layer our security and keep our WLAN secure we don’t publish our SSID or network name.

Taos: Have there been many support issues with your wireless deployment?

Ginna: We always have employees/contractors within our company testing the boundaries, and the most common issue that we deal with is rogue access points being brought into or setup within the buildings. Once we detect the access point, we determine if it is needed for product development or testing and, if so, simply ask the user not to broadcast the SSID or connect it to the corporate network confusing others within our network. If it is not required for product development, we ask the user to remove the access point.

We have also had some issues with XP and the docking stations when switching between WLAN to LAN. Some of the recent hotfixes have seemed to solve these issues.

As planning is an important part of implementation, there are still times that we will discover the need for additional access points. We have found that we must carefully place these and make minor configuration changes to avoid conflicts with other access points.

Taos: What do you see on the horizon for wireless technology and how does your company plan to evolve your wireless environment?

Ginna: As mentioned earlier, 802.11g is on our roadmap and has been out commercially for some time now. We have completed beta testing with some of our hardware vendors and as such will be upgrading in the next 30 days to this new technology. Additionally, we are going to deploy A turbo which is an entirely new generation of wireless running at 108 Mbps. This will make our WLAN as fast as our “wired” LAN.

We are also working diligently with many of our partners to improve and deploy many other services that will allow us to use both the carrier networks and our WLAN to create a completely Mobile workforce. Currently, my team is evaluating several PDA applications that will allow us to manage our network and troubleshoot both network or user issues using the PDA via wireless technologies.

Taos: To close, what advice would you give to others who intend to deploy wireless technologies widely throughout their organization?

Ginna: There is a lot of concern about wireless security and we have been able to reasonably address that with our policy around VPN and layered approach. Wireless is very cost effective and reliable, and has not increased our headcount to support. We have found it provides the type of cost efficiency and innovation that modern IT departments need to report to executives.

Business justification and vendor selection will be critical to implementation success, so manage those closely.

Ginna Raahauge as been with Palm since April 2001 and, with the creation of PalmSource, became the Director of IT & Real Estate in June 2002. Ms. Raahauge is responsible for all worldwide technical (IT) and physical (Real Estate) infrastructure activities. Prior to Palm/PalmSource, Ms. Raahauge held a variety of positions at companies including Seagate Technologies, Deloitte & Touche, PeopleSoft, and KLA-Tencor. During her consulting tenure, Ms. Raahauge managed many complex, large scale implementations for some of the top Fortune 500 companies. Ms. Raahauge holds a B.S. in Business Administration from University of Phoenix.