Cisco Announces New Study Demonstrating Increasing Financial Returns with Wider Deployment of Wireless LANs

SAN JOSE, Calif., November 12, 2003 - Cisco Systems Inc. today announced the results of a new study conducted by independent research firm NOP World Technology, which shows significant productivity gains and increasing financial returns to organizations adopting a policy of wider wireless local area network (LAN) deployment. The report, entitled "2003 Wireless LAN Benefits Study," is an update of a study conducted in 2001 by Cisco and NOP World Technology. Results from this current 2003 study demonstrate a rise in employee productivity, increased cost savings and other benefits achieved by end users and IT network administrators from more than 400 U.S.- based medium and large organizations (100+ employees) using wireless LANs.

Among the most significant results revealed was that using wireless LANs gave end users the ability to be connected to the network, on average, over 3.5 more hours per day - up from 1.75 hours in 2001. With the additional connection time provided by the freedom and mobility of wireless LANs, end users reported they are as much as 27 percent more productive than they would otherwise be.

Greater productivity is also being driven by the wireless LAN's ability to enable users to do their work when and where it is convenient for them - whether at work, at home, or on the road. The 2003 NOP World Technology study points to increasing business implementation of wireless LANs in employees' homes, as well as significant hot spot usage while on the move in airport lounges, coffee shops, and hotels. The result of this increasingly diverse work environment is the ability to be flexible about when and where work is conducted. This flexibility has contributed to a reported time savings of almost 80 minutes per employee per workday - an increase of almost 30 minutes per day over 2001 NOP World Technology study findings.

Study results also show that organizations realize greater financial returns as wireless LAN technology is rolled out to more users and departments within organizations. Almost 25 percent of employees within mid-size and large organizations access the wireless LAN today, up from 16 percent in 2001. This increase in deployment, plus the reported additional time savings, resulted in the rise in annual dollar value of time saved per employee to almost $14K today, up from just over $7K in 2001. With IT respondents in this study predicting that 50 percent of their employees will have access to the wireless LAN in the next two years, their organizations can expect to realize even greater financial returns in the very near future.

"This increasing productivity - and greater financial return - corroborates our expectations upon completion of the 2001 study. The increasingly ubiquitous nature of wireless LAN usage - being driven by wider horizontal roll-out within organizations - is facilitating a surging cost benefit for companies going wireless. In a business environment where costs have already been cut pretty close to the bone, delivering tangible productivity and efficiency gains has to be the way forward," said Richard Jameson, CEO of NOP World Technology. "We expect this trend to continue as wireless LAN roll-out within organizations becomes even broader - and as the technology is driven across all levels of the organization."

An added benefit of wireless LAN use revealed by the NOP World Technology study is greater accuracy in everyday tasks, with nearly two thirds of end user respondents reporting improved accuracy. For respondents from healthcare organizations, 70 percent felt the improvement in accuracy was noticeable -- the "anytime, anywhere" aspect of wireless communications helps medical staff ensure patient health and safety by being able to access and record patient information at the point of care.

The NOP 2003 study further validates other studies' findings that the propensity for increased wireless LAN deployment is tied to the adoption of portable devices (80% of wireless LAN users in this study connect to the network via laptop PCs). And, as these devices increasingly come with an embedded wireless LAN capability, it will be easier for organizations to deploy this technology. Results from the study indicate that 50 percent of PDA users access the wireless LAN using embedded 802.11 technology, and one in five IT respondents say that all of the notebooks they purchased in the past year came with an embedded wireless LAN capability. Furthermore, Gartner predicts that by 2005, 80 percent of all commercial notebooks will have an 802.11 interface (0.8 probability) [1].

"As shown in today's NOP 2003 study findings, companies are seeing the compelling case for wireless LANs in terms of productivity gains and demonstrated ROI that wider deployment of wireless LANs can deliver," said Bill Rossi, vice president and general manager of Cisco's Wireless Networking Business Unit. "With embedded wireless in notebooks, exciting new applications such as wireless voice, and simplified management and operations, wireless LANs will become much more main stream in the enterprise."

The 2003 study was conducted by NOP World Technology for Cisco Systems, Inc. For a copy of the NOP World Technology survey report, entitled "2003 Wireless LAN Benefits Study," visit http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2003_NOP_WLAN_Benefits_Study.pdf.

In a related announcement today, Cisco also introduced the IEEE 802.11g versions of the Cisco Aironet 1200 and 1100 Series Access Points and that over 80 Cisco Compatible Devices are now available from Dell, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, Linksys, NETGEAR and Toshiba. For details, please refer to press release entitled "Cisco Delivers Leading IEEE 802.11g Aironet Access Points and Multi-Mode Client Adapters for Fast, Affordable Wireless Networking."

About NOP World Technology

NOP World Technology is the specialist technology research division of NOP World, one of the world's top ten research firms. NOP World is an acknowledged leader in business-to-business research spheres, offering technology expertise across a wide range of market sectors. In addition to expertise in the networking technology arena, NOP World Technology also has specialized research teams focused upon IT services, software and telecommunications.

NOP World's global technology operations are headquartered in London and New York. In addition, NOP World has specialist experience across the automotive, healthcare, financial, and consumer/retail sectors. For more information, visit http://www.nopworld.com/

[1] Source: Gartner Group, Notebook Market Predictions 2003, Ian Keene, May 2003