Daily Resources for Web Designers & Developers by Andy Sowards » Tech

Top Most Important & Crucial Points To Consider Before Becoming A Freelance Logo Designer

Lief — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:50:16 +0000

You may have thought that you could just up and start freelancing any day, but there are some top most crucial points before becoming a freelance logo designer, that you must first consider. Freelancing is not as easy and comfortable as it sounds. In fact, it could be quite tough. Even though logo designing might be your passion, you could still find it a lot of hard work. Before taking up freelancing, people usually feel that it could not be any worse than working under others in a regular office job. But if you look closely, it can be worse. Actually, it could be much worse. So before you decide that working as a freelance logo designer is your life’s calling, it would be better if you learned what the top most important & crucial points before becoming a freelance logo designer are.

The Most Important Points Before Becoming a Freelance Logo Designer That You Should Question Yourself on:

Before you take up freelancing full time, these are some of the questions that you should definitely ask yourself. They might give you an idea about whether you are actually suited to this career.

Can You Run A Business?

Most people forget that when you become a freelancer, knowing how to simply design the best logos is not enough. Sure that is important. But you also have to manage the business part of freelancing now. Handling a business isn’t an easy task. People go to college and study for 4 years before they get a degree in Management or Business. So can you do it without that knowledge?

If you believe that you can, then you have to make sure that you also do the following things.

You just cannot give up learning. You have to keep reading up and gathering knowledge.
have to learn all the new designing techniques that are developed in order to make yourself seem attractive and knowledgeable to your clients.
Since the designing of a logo is greatly dependent on technologies, you must also keep track of the latest ones available in the market. Moreover, you must be aware of all the updated version of the old technologies. This way your work will always be accepted by any client.

Can You Be Your Own Boss & Make Your Own Hours?

You are definitely your own boss. You don’t have anyone telling you what to do and when to do. But, as good as that may sound, it has its downsides too. For instance, you don’t have anyone to tell you when to get up in the morning and rush to office. So, discipline is something you will have to have within you. If you are one of those people who only work when you have someone to give you a fixed deadline, wake you up and set you to work, then freelancing is probably not your cup of tea.

Here comes the worst part. Did you think your eight hours a day, 5 days a week job, was hectic? Then get ready to face something even worse. Since freelancing does not have any fixed hour, it also doesn’t remain restricted to the 8 hours every day mark. So, you must be ready to work more than forty hours every week and often, late into the night. Many a times, you will have no time to catch up with friends or go out especially, in the beginning of your freelancing job. Are you ready to deal with all this? If yes, then you definitely have a good shot at making it big, as a freelancer.

You Can Design A Logo, But Can You Handle Paperwork & Other Random Time Consuming Tasks?

You are your own manager now. So you can’t depend on others to handle the paperwork and register the business that you are starting. On top of that, it is your responsibility to look for your clients, handle all your emails and reply to them regularly, pay all the taxes etc. So, make sure you fulfil all the formalities right. You must not forget to consider this point, as it falls within the range of the topmost crucial points before becoming a freelance logo designer.

Can You Handle Stress?

The other very important question that any aspiring freelancing logo designer should ask himself is that can you handle the stress that comes with this job? Stress is something that you will have to deal with on a daily basis, so you would better start looking for ways to manage it.

You are going to have to work late into the night day after day. On top that, your clients pay for your services. So they are going to try and extract the maximum amount of work from you. This means that you would often have to fulfil a high number of demands involving re-doing, changing, altering etc. If you feel that you can’t deal with all this pressure, then it is better to give this career choice another much needed thought.

Can You Handle Criticism?

Are you able to deal with criticism well? You are going to get a lot of it. Many of your customers will have good things to say to you. Dealing with that is the easy part. Burt when someone points out our flaws and lays it all down in front of you, you must be able to take it positively. It must become a part of your growth process and help you to slowly overcome your inabilities and shortcomings.

Now that we have spoken about criticism, let us talk about abuse. No matter how unlikely it seems, you will always have certain customers who will scream at you and say demeaning things. This is because; there are a particular category of people who feel that they own you because they are paying you. Not only do you have to have a monumental amount of patience simply to deal with them, but also the confidence to defend yourself. Having said all this, your customers are the ones who will refer you to others in future and as a result, help you get more work. So you must always be on favourable terms with them.

These are only a few of the situations that you may have to face as a freelancer. However, it is not all bad news. Once you are able to deal with the initial hurdles well, you would start to get some regular amount of work. With time, you may even be able to make a good living purely out of freelancing as a logo designer. But before that happens, make sure you keep these top most crucial points before becoming a freelance logo designer in mind.

If you like this, You’ll love These.

The Future of Networking on 10 Gigabit Ethernet

Brian Johnson — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 19:34:20 +0000

Advertise here with BSA

Intelligence In Software: IT Software Strategy

The Future of Networking on 10 Gigabit Ethernet

The rise of cloud computing is a bit like that of a space shuttle taking off: When the rocket engine and its propellants fire up, the shuttle lifts slowly off the launch pad and then builds momentum until it streaks into space.

Cloud is now in the momentum-building phase and on the verge of quickly soaring to new heights. There are lots of good reasons for the rapid rise of this new approach to computing. Cloud models are widely seen as one of the keys to increasing IT and business agility, making better use of infrastructure and cutting costs.

So how do you launch your cloud? An essential first step is to prepare your network for the unique requirements of services running on a multitenant shared infrastructure. These requirements include IT simplicity, scalability, interoperability and manageability. All of these requirements make the case for unified networking based on 10 gigabit Ethernet (10GbE).

Unified networking over 10GbE simplifies your network environment. It allows you to unite your network into one type of fabric so you don’t have to maintain and manage different technologies for different types of network traffic. You also gain the ability to run storage traffic over a dedicated SAN if that makes the most sense for your organization.

Either way, 10GbE gives you a great deal of scalability, enabling you to quickly scale up your networking bandwidth to keep pace with the dynamic demands of cloud applications. This rapid scalability helps you avoid I/O bottlenecks and meet your service-level agreements.

While that’s all part of the goodness of 10GbE, it’s important to keep this caveat in mind: Not all 10GbE is the same. You need a solution that scales and, with features like intelligent offloads of targeted processing functions, helps you realize best-in-class performance for your cloud network. Unified networking solutions can be enabled through a combination of standard Intel Ethernet products along with trusted network protocols integrated and enabled in a broad range of operating systems and hypervisors. This approach makes unified networking capabilities available on every server, enabling maximum reuse in heterogeneous environments. Ultimately, this approach to unified networking helps you solve today’s overarching cloud networking challenges and create a launch pad for your private, hybrid or public cloud.

The urge to purge: Have you had enough of “too many” and “too much”?

In today’s data center, networks are a story of “too many” and “too much.” That’s too many fabrics, too many cables, and too much complexity. Unified networking simplifies this story. “Too many” and “too much” become “just right.” Let’s start with the fabrics. It’s not uncommon to find an organization that is running three distinctly different networks: a 1GbE management network, a multi-1GbE local area network (LAN), and a Fibre Channel or iSCSI storage area network (SAN).

Unified networking enables cost-effective connectivity to the LAN and the SAN on the same Ethernet fabric. Pick your protocols for your storage traffic. You can use NFS, iSCSI, or Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) to carry storage traffic over your converged Ethernet network.

You can still have a dedicated network for storage traffic if that works best for your needs. The only difference: That network runs your storage protocols over 10GbE — the same technology used in your LAN.

When you make this fundamental shift, you can reduce your equipment needs. Convergence of network fabrics allows you to standardize the equipment you use throughout your networking environment — the same cabling, the same NICs, the same switches. You now need just one set of everything, instead of two or three sets.

In a complementary gain, convergence over 10GbE helps you cut your cable numbers. In a 1GbE world, many virtualized servers have eight to 10 ports, each of which has its own network cable. In a typical deployment, one 10GbE cable could handle all of that traffic. This isn’t a vision of things to come. This world of simplified networking is here today. Better still, this is a world based on open standards. This approach to unified networking increases interoperability with common APIs and open-standard technologies. A few examples of these technologies:

Data Center Bridging (DCB) allows multiple types of traffic to run over an Ethernet wire.
Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) enables the Fibre Channel protocol used in many SANs to run over the Ethernet standard common in LANs.
Management Component Transport Protocol (MCTP) and Network Controller Sideband Interface (NC-SI) enable server management via the network.

These and other open-standard technologies enable the interoperability that allows network convergence and management simplification. And just like that, “too many” and “too much” become “just right.”

Know your limits — then push them with super-elastic 10GbE

Let’s imagine for a moment a dream highway. In the middle of the night, when traffic is light, the highway is a four-lane road. When the morning rush hour begins and cars flood the road, the highway magically adds several lanes to accommodate the influx of traffic.

This commuter’s dream is the way cloud networks must work. The cloud network must be architected to quickly scale up and down to adapt itself to the dynamic and unpredictable demands of applications. This super-elasticity is a fundamental requirement for a successful cloud.

Of course, achieving this level of elasticity is easier said than done. In a cloud environment, virtualization turns a single physical server into multiple virtual machines, each with its own dynamic I/O bandwidth demands. These dynamic and unpredictable demands can overwhelm networks and lead to unacceptable I/O bottlenecks. The solution to this challenge lies in super-elastic 10 GbE networks built for cloud traffic. So what does it take to get there? The right solutions help you build your 10 GbE network with unique technologies designed to accelerate virtualization and remove I/O bottlenecks, while complementing solutions from leading cloud software providers.

Consider these examples:

The latest Ethernet servers support Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV), a standard created by the PCI Special Interest Group. SR-IOV improves network performance for Citrix XenServer and Red Hat KVM by providing dedicated I/O and data isolation between VMs and the network controller. The technology allows you to partition a physical port into multiple virtual I/O ports, each dedicated to a particular virtual machine.
Virtual Machine Device Queues (VMDq) improves network performance and CPU utilization for VMware and Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V by reducing the sorting overhead of networking traffic. VMDq offloads data-packet sorting from the virtual switch in the virtual machine monitor and instead does this on the network adaptor. This innovation helps you avoid the I/O tax that comes with virtualization.

Technologies like these enable you to build a high-performing, elastic network that helps keep the bottlenecks out of your cloud. It’s like that dream highway that adds lanes whenever the traffic gets heavy.

Manage the ups, downs, and in-betweens of services in the cloud

In an apartment building, different tenants have different Internet requirements. Tenants who transfer a lot of large files or play online games want the fastest Internet connections they can get. Tenants who use the Internet only for email and occasional shopping are probably content to live with slower transfer speeds. To stay competitive, service providers need to tailor their offerings to these diverse needs.

This is the way it is in a cloud environment: Different tenants have different service requirements. Some need a lot of bandwidth and the fastest possible throughput times. Others can settle for something less.

If you’re operating a cloud environment, either public or private, you need to meet these differing requirements. That means you need to be able to allocate the right level of bandwidth to an application and manage network quality of service (QoS) in a manner that meets your service-level agreements (SLAs) with different tenants — technologies that allow you to tailor service quality to the needs and SLAs of different applications and different cloud tenants.

Here are some of the more important technologies for a well-managed cloud network: Data Center Bridging (DCB) provides a collection of standards-based end-to-end networking technologies that make Ethernet the unified fabric for multiple types of traffic in the data center.

It enables better traffic prioritization over a single interface, as well as an advanced means of shaping traffic on the network to decrease congestion.
Queue Rate Limiting (QRL) assigns a queue to each virtual machine (VM) or each tenant in the cloud environment and controls the amount of bandwidth delivered to that user. The Intel approach to QRL enables a VM or tenant to get a minimum amount of bandwidth, but it doesn’t limit the maximum bandwidth. If there is headroom on the wire, the VM or tenant can use it.
Traffic Steering sorts traffic per tenant to support rate limiting, QoS and other management approaches. Traffic Steering is made possible by on-chip flow classification that delineates one tenant from another. This is like the logic in the local Internet provider’s box in the apartment building. Everybody’s Internet traffic comes to the apartment in a single pipe, but then gets divided out to each apartment, so all the packets are delivered to the right addresses.

Technologies like these enable your organization to manage the ups, downs, and in-betweens of services in the cloud. You can then tailor your cloud offerings to the needs of different internal or external customers — and deliver the right level of service at the right price.

On the road to the cloud

For years, people have talked about 10 GbE being the future of networking and the foundation of cloud environments. Well, the future is now; 10GbE is here in a big way.

There are many reasons for this fundamental shift. Unified networking based on 10GbE helps you reduce the complexity of your network environment, increase I/O scalability and better manage network quality of service. 10GbE simplifies your network, allowing you to converge to one type of fabric. This is a story of simplification. One network card. One network connection. Optimum LAN and SAN performance. Put it all together and you have a solution for your journey to a unified, cloud-ready network.

To learn more about cloud unified networking, see this resource from our sponsor: Cloud Usage Models.

If you like this, You’ll love These.

But Where Have All the Clients Gone? How To Get More New Freelance Design & Development Work

Jules — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 07:59:33 +0000

Advertise here with BSA

If you’re a freelance designer or developer in 2012, you’ll recognise that smell in the air. You know, the one that smells a lot like fear. Whether you’re new to the game or a seasoned pro, the issue of clients, sales and good old moola rolling in is probably one that dictates a lot of your daily activities. You might have given up the comfortable day job with its little perks and reassuring monotony, to strike out on your own, be your own boss, set your own hours and endless cups of tea/coffee (insert favourite beverage here) etc. You may well have envisioned an easier, less stressful (and shorter) working day, one that involved lounging around in your ~~tacky~~ comfortable clothes, your favourite music blasting from the speakers and a smug look on your face. Except you didn’t quite bet on the fact that the clients aren’t exactly knocking down your door, did you?

(Field Of Dreams Image via Shutterstock)

The old adage of “Built it, and they will come“ certainly doesn’t apply to any freelancer I know. It’s a natural state of play these days. For every great idea/concept/service/product out there on the web today (and indeed, in many industries) it is always swiftly followed by a barrage of knock-offs, rip-offs, copycats, grasscutters and undercutters. There is always someone out there willing to do it cheaper and faster (so they say) than you. If you did your research before setting out as a freelancer, you would have no doubt come across the many ‘freelance’ sites out there where you can *shudder* bid for a design project or contract, and the job is often handed out to the one who will do it for the cheapest. If you’re hoping to make it as a freelancer these days, you’ve certainly got a lot to compete with especially as outsourcing becomes ever more popular. The talent pool has invariably widened as more and more people turn to the web for their income.

So you’ve set up your business, built your site, set-up your social media accounts, turned to your inner networking circle for portfolio work, written blog posts, maybe even joined a few forums here and there. You’ve probably registered on pretty much every single ‘directory/freelance’ site out there. You’ve read the eBooks, the blog posts, the How-to’s any resource you could find and you feel ready, confident to open your virtual doors to prospective clients. You probably feel all excited (clammy hands optional). And still… nothing. No emails, no phone calls, no tweets, no nothing. The silence is deafening.

So where have all the clients gone? Why aren’t they clambering over themselves to get at you and your skills? The answer is profoundly simple.

It’s because you aren’t where your clients are.

(Solitary Image via Shutterstock)

Get it? The internet means that we are becoming intellectually less inclined to dig deep for what we’re looking for, because the majority of the time we’re simply overloaded with information wherever we go (notice how I say ‘we’, because when it comes to prospective clients, you have to think like they do). It’s a well known fact that if you don’t rank on the first page of Google (or other reputable search engine… no wait… what were their names again?) you simply won’t get seen.

So before you rush out there to set-up your Google Adwords account (no really, don’t even bother just yet) what should you, as a freelancer, be doing to get clients?

1. Set yourself a ‘target’ audience

(Target Audience Image via Shutterstock)

Okay, so you’re a web designer, developer, programmer, monkey or whatever. Great! Identity crisis over. What you should be asking yourself is “Who am I working for?”. And before you nonchalantly answer “everyone who wants it”, you need to remember the old marketing saying that “when you attempt to market yourself to everyone, you end up marketing to no-one”. A good example is good old Jon Doe, who owns several hotels under his franchise and needs a spiffy design tailored to his industry. What do you think he’s going to type into his trusty search engine? That’s right… “Hotel Web Design” (call it an educated guess). And unless your site is SEO’d to the max with the relevant keywords, old Jon Doe isn’t even going to come close to finding you.

You need to find your happy place within the scope of your skills and then market accordingly to a specific demographic. A prospective client is going to be far more impressed and comfortable with choosing you for their next project if you can demonstrate exactly how you can fulfil their requirements. So our Jon Doe is more likely to choose you if your portfolio shows a history of designing quality websites for hotels or the hospitality industry. By targeting your niche, you are more likely to a) show up in search engine results (provided your site is optimised accordingly) and b) be found by prospective customers checking out their competitors websites by the gratuitous link to your site in the footer.

2. Where does your client hang out?

(Ads Image via Shutterstock)

So Jon Doe is just a regular guy, keen to get his business in the spotlight. He probably subscribes to ‘Hotel Monthly’ (I made that magazine up, genius huh?). He more than likely reads articles on popular hotel websites on how to run his business better, or he’s joined several groups on various social networking sites for hotel owners. He may even attend conferences, seminars or workshops on running a hotel. Now if your business doesn’t feature anywhere where old Jon Doe hangs out regularly, he’s never going to know about you and your amazing hotel web design business. Got it?

If you’re going to spend on advertising, then your money will be far better spent if you target your ads to an industry or niche. Research your ideal clients, build up an idea of who they are, what they do, what they are interested in and where they go to find information, then make sure that your skills are prominently displayed accordingly.

3. Fine tune your portfolio

(Portfolio Image via Shutterstock)

Of course, 1 and 2 will mean absolutely nothing if your portfolio doesn’t measure up. One of the biggest mistakes freelancers can make (and I say this, because I’ve done it) is to set up their business and race out there to advertise themselves. Sure, your site may well be bombarded with visitors, but if your portfolio isn’t up to scratch then none of those beautiful little clicks are going to be worth anything if you can’t convert them into clients. It is far better to have your best work displayed (even if it is only a handful of projects) that really showcase what you can do. Quality wins over quantity, hands down.

And if your portfolio looks a little bare…

4. Partner up with other freelancers

(Partner Image via Shutterstock)

Now it’s not something that occurs regularly, but there are other freelancers out there who have more work than they can handle. Instead of turning clients down, their street cred will remain intact if they can offer prospective clients a recommended alternative. A client will feel far more comfortable if another freelancer has recommended you, because everyone knows that if the alternative turns out to be crap, then it doesn’t make them look good either. Find out who your fellow freelancers are in your niche/industry and get in touch. Most freelancers I know are friendly, helpful and happy to collaborate because despite our geek status, we’re generally a nice bunch. I say generally, because there are always the odd ones who prove me wrong. When you do make contact, outline your skills, give links to examples of your work, be courteous and let them know it’s a two way street should the roles be reversed in the future.

5. Contract out to design agencies

(Agency Image via Shutterstock)

This is becoming quite a popular trend among my network (it’s a small network, but hey). When freelance work is generally a bit quiet or slow, it may be worth your while contacting established design agencies and offering your skills on an ad hoc basis. There are many design agencies that work with a core number of full-time staff, but require additional resources on a part-time basis for larger projects. The same rules as above apply for contacting them make sure you’re professional, showcase your skills and provide recent samples of your work. You may get work straight away (if your timing is right), but even if you don’t then at least you know that they will consider you for future projects. Sites like dribbble.com have a job board which is generally where agencies list their vacancies, and is always worth checking out. You never know what opportunities will arise if you never try nothing ventured, nothing gained!

So there you have it my non-exact formula for garnering new clients in an ever-growing industry. Above all though, don’t ever give up because if you love what you do, then the web needs people like you.

If you like this, You’ll love These.

The Billion Dollar Lost Laptop Problem – The Cost of Lost Data & How To Protect Yourself.

Editors — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 18:42:27 +0000

Advertise here with BSA

Intelligence In Software: IT Software Strategy

The Billion Dollar Lost Laptop Problem

Every time a business laptop is lost or stolen, an organization takes a direct cost hit. But how much of a hit might surprise you. What would your organization do if it realized that each year it’s losing millions of dollars in this way? Odds are, it would be far more diligent in protecting laptops.

Last year, the Ponemon Institute released a study (conducted independently and sponsored by Intel) of The Billion Dollar Lost Laptop Problem, an independent benchmark of 329 private and public-sector U.S. organizations — ranging in size from less than 1,000 to greater than 75,000 employees and representing more than 12 industry sectors — to determine the economic cost of lost or stolen laptops. What they found: The cost is huge.

Participating organizations reported that in a 12-month period 86,455 laptops were lost or otherwise went missing. That added up to 263 laptops per organization on average.

According to an earlier Ponemon Institute study (conducted independently and sponsored by Intel), The Cost of a Lost Laptop, the average value of a lost laptop is a staggering $49,246. This value is based on seven cost components: replacement cost, detection, forensics, data breach, lost intellectual property costs, lost productivity and legal, consulting and regulatory expenses. It’s important to point out that the smallest cost component is the replacement cost of the laptop.

Some of the salient findings from The Billion Dollar Lost Laptop Problem report:

The total economic impact for 329 participating companies is $2.1 billion, or on average $6.4 million per organization.
Out of the 263 laptops per organization that are lost or go missing, on average just 12 laptops were recovered.
Forty-three percent of laptops were lost off-site (working from a home office or hotel room); 33 percent lost in transit or travel; and 12 percent were lost in the workplace.
Twelve percent of organizations said they don’t know where employees or contractors lose their laptops.
Although 46 percent of the lost systems contained confidential data, 30 percent of laptops lost had disc encryption, 29 percent had backup, and just 10 percent had other anti-theft features.
Industries that experience the highest rate of laptop loss are education and research; health and pharmaceuticals were next, followed by the public sector. Financial services firms had the lowest loss rate.
Laptops with the most sensitive and confidential data are the most likely to be stolen. However, these laptops are also more likely to have disc encryption.
Average loss ratio over the laptop’s useful life is 7.12 percent. That means more than 7 percent of all assigned laptops in benchmarked companies will be lost or stolen.

But Who’s Minding the Data?
Not nearly enough organizations, it appears. Given the significant financial impact of missing laptops and the vulnerabilities of stolen laptop data, it is astonishing that the majority of these companies aren’t taking even basic precautions to protect them.

The worst cost component is the data breach. A stolen laptop can be easily booted to reveal passwords, stored temporary files the user was even unaware of, and access to VPN connections, remote desktops, wireless encryption keys and more.

That’s enough reason to do something. Here are your best options for protecting your organization’s data integrity against all of that potential mayhem.

Full Disk Encryption: Full disk encryption prevents unauthorized access to data storage. Under this scenario, nearly everything is encrypted, and the decision of which individual files to encrypt is not left up to users’ discretion. But all too often, end users choose to disable the full disk encryption, probably because they incorrectly assume it significantly slows all of the processing.

Anti-Theft Technology: Laptops can disable themselves, when the hardware observes suspicious activity, if they get lost or stolen. When the laptop is recovered, it can be easily reactivated and returned to normal operation.

Data in the Cloud: Keeping sensitive material off your laptop by storing data in the cloud is not a viable solution, because that does nothing to protect the data. Such data is easily accessible by simply cracking the login credentials. Worse yet, the existence of a full backup actually increases the cost of a lost laptop, because backups make it easier to confirm the loss of sensitive or confidential data, resulting in greater expense from forensic diagnosis and recovery efforts.

Just like Smokey the Bear says about you and forest fires, only you can stop data loss.

If you like this, You’ll love These.

WiGig: More than Wi-Fi on Steroids

Tim Kridel — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:06:47 +0000

Advertise here with BSA

Intelligence In Software: IT Software Strategy

WiGig: More than Wi-Fi on Steroids

Wi-Fi is one of the world’s most widely used wireless technologies. Two common downsides of that popularity are interference and often slow speeds. A new wireless technology called WiGig aims to complement Wi-Fi performance by providing an alternative for certain usages, like peer-to-peer and device-to-device information exchange.

Commercially available by late 2012, WiGig will use the 60 GHz band, which is unlicensed spectrum that’s virtually unused in most countries. Wi-Fi shares the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands with everything from microwave ovens to cordless phones. That spectral difference affects performance, reliability and potential applications. For example, with any wireless technology, higher frequencies typically can support more bandwidth. WiGig has a theoretical top speed of 7 Gbps versus sub-100 Mbps with Wi-Fi.

Higher frequencies also mean shorter ranges. In an area with a high density of wireless devices, such as an office building, a short range reduces the chances that one device will be close enough to others to interfere with them. Interference also saps bandwidth, so a shorter range can improve throughput too. The upshot is that WiGig provides enterprises with a way to reduce interference and improve bandwidth on their Wi-Fi LANs (WLANs).

“By definition, these WiGig applications are much more short range: 5 meters rather than 25 meters for Wi-Fi infrastructure,” says Ali Sadri, chairman and president of WiGig Alliance.

Here’s one scenario: For short-range, high-bandwidth applications — such as connecting a laptop to a projector or display — the enterprise starts replacing Wi-Fi devices with WiGig gear. That offloading means less interference and less traffic for the remaining Wi-Fi infrastructure.

“They can say: ‘All of the infrastructure access technologies are going to be 2.4 or 5 Gig. All of the peer-to-peer (P2P) applications and display applications will go over WiGig,’” says Sadri, who’s also director of Intel’s Mobile Wireless Group. “I think there’s a huge opportunity for IT to clean up the mess, perhaps even disallowing 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz from being used for P2P applications.”

Enterprises also could use WiGig to enhance network security. For example, guests could be restricted to using WiGig for tasks such as Internet access or connecting to a conference room projector. WiGig also could be the way to authenticate guests, such as contractors and business partners, who deserve access to the corporate WLAN.

Consumer electronics vendors could use a similar strategy. For example, some set-top boxes use Wi-Fi rather than cables to connect to TVs. (Panasonic says WiGig can transfer a 30-minute compressed HD video in about 10 seconds.) In the future, they might use WiGig in order to deliver the bandwidth necessary for 1080p 3-D video, reducing traffic on and interference to the home’s WLAN.

What Types of Devices?

The ability to implement those strategies depends on the availability of WiGig-equipped devices. One major vendor, Wilocity, is currently providing samples of its chipsets to device OEMs and expects to start shipping commercial volumes by the middle of this year. If that schedule holds, the first WiGig devices could debut by late 2012.

“I expect to see notebooks and tablets showing up in 2012 and 2013,” says Mark Grodzinsky, Wilocity vice president of marketing. “Phones probably will be a little further out, but they’re definitely a target market.

“Storage is very interesting because with the wireless bus extension in WiGig, you can do things such as wireless PCI Express. Storage devices are moving to a native PCI interface, so rather than going to USB and converting USB to PCI Express, you could do wireless PCI Express direct.”

WiGig also dovetails nicely with the trend toward thin devices, particularly tablets, smartphones, TVs and laptops. The thinner they get, the more difficult it is for OEMs to find room for multiple connectors, some of which may be thicker than the device itself. WiGig could provide a way to reduce or even eliminate USB, HDMI and other ports.

“You can imagine an Ultrabook that you put on your desk, and you’ve got a dock that’s got connections to high-performance storage and a high-definition monitor,” says Grodzinsky.

That’s probably going to be one of WiGig’s initial commercial applications because the alliance is finalizing a docking station extension, which will facilitate connections and secure the data flowing over them. The organization also is working to ensure multivendor interoperability. In December, it held its first plugfest, and it’s developing a certification program.

Is WiGig a Complement or Competitor?

If WiGig is so fast and relatively untouched by interference, why wouldn’t chipset manufacturers and device OEMs simply start abandoning technologies such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC, WHDI and WirelessHD?

In the short term, one reason is because they’re incumbents, whereas WiGig has yet to make its commercial debut, let alone build a following. In fact, WiGig is leveraging Wi-Fi’s success by basing part of its technology on Wi-Fi. That means Wi-Fi vendors can reuse some of their designs for WiGig to build multi-technology chipsets.

Another reason is use cases. For example, Wi-Fi’s architecture is better for LAN-type applications and for connections that span 25 meters or longer. WiGig is designed for links of 5 meters or shorter, and for P2P connections rather than, say, an access point supporting several devices simultaneously. Meanwhile, NFC is better suited for low-bandwidth connections over distances of 4 centimeters to 0.2 meters.

“I wouldn’t position these as an either-or,” says Grodzinsky. “WiGig is designed to complement Wi-Fi, not replace it. We were built on top of the 802.11 spec so that everything we’re doing is fully compliant with Wi-Fi. That will allow you to build tri-band products, which will have 60 GHz, 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz.”