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V. Rishi Kumar

HYDERABAD, April 14

JUST visualise a chief executive officer of a company walking out of the precincts of his workplace and relocating the entire strategy session to a lush green field beside a swimming pool or for that matter a campus forest, through the use of technology. Wireless local area network (LAN) is helping bring about changes in work environment.

In the stress-packed work environment of our times, wireless LAN promises to bring in the much-needed breath of fresh air. By taking the workplace from indoors to pleasing outdoors as at the Satyam Technology Centre, it is possible to enhance productivity by leaps and bounds.

Moreover, meetings held in such conducive surroundings make way for better inter-personal relationships, , according to Mr Thigarajan K., Director, Strategic Affairs and Communications, Satyam Computer.

Similar is the case with the management students of the Indian School of Business. Their entire 250-acre campus has a 2 MBPS LAN facility offering anywhere, anytime connectivity.

The situation is no different at the Taj Group of hotels where majority of their properties across the country, barring a few heritage ones, have Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity) facilities for their cyber-savvy guests.

The wireless LAN at the Satyam Technology Centre campus is the brainchild of Satyam's Managing Director, Mr B. Rama Raju.

This came up following a comment by the visiting US Ambassador, Mr Robert Blackwill. Charmed by the lush green environment, Mr Blackwill reportedly commented, "... This is such a wonderful place. So close to the nature and absolutely inspiring. If only one could work from here, than from within the four walls of the usual buildings."

This paved the way for this wireless LAN project. How does this work? This innovation of wireless LAN uses benches designed to seamlessly integrate with nature. The benches, made to look like tree stumps, are more than what they seem.

At their core is the buzz of technology at work — these benches are equipped with power supply facilities and high-speed Internet connectivity.

If you get irked with the concrete jungle and want to break the monotony, here are a few places like the Satyam Technology Centre, the Indian School of Business and the Taj Group of Hotels, that illustrate how technology has made it possible with what they describe as Green workstations.

The Area Director of Taj GVK group of Hotels, Mr Veer Vijay Singh, said that the response to the Wi-Fi offering was extremely encouraging and more and more people had begun to enjoy its advantages - - by the pool side or the coffee shop. Apart from the ease of use, it is also cheaper for its guests.

The Taj Group has gone a step forward and created Cyber Butlers to complement the launch of their broadband solutions that allow guests and net buffs to access high speed Internet from their laptops in any part of the hotel.

The wireless system installed in the hotel is based on 802.11 standards established by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. According to Taj, its guests are delighted with the performance of the system and the feedback is positive and the effort is to make the system more user-friendly.

The Indian School of Business provides for wireless LAN.

The campus has data points and the wireless LAN enables students to work anywhere around the campus be it by the lawn side, library or in a corridor, this is complemented by an optical fibre cable network.

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