It is an increasingly wireless world we live in, but this untethered world is anything but homogeneous, uniform, or seamless. It is, instead, a mixed bag of technologies--cellular towers, satellite, WiFi, WiMAX, wireless Ethernet, sensor-based networks, and multiple bands of radio waves--that supports a wide variety of early applications in asset management, location tracking, and remote diagnosis of equipment, to name a few.
The problem is that wireless has emerged in a slapdash sort of way, unsystematically placed in areas of the organization where only individual groups can benefit. However, as manufacturers try to drive as much efficiency into the enterprise as possible, they have the unenviable task of having to manage this mishmash of technological approaches. And it is not just the wireless infrastructure, but the devices as well.
Source: Managing Automation, http://www.managingautomation.com