Antony Smyth, a partner at Ernst & Young's information systems department, says the professional services firm has been evaluating Bluetooth for some time, although it is not yet using it widely.

Ernst & Young has carried out a number of trials for its own business requirements but has also weighed up the technology for its clients. Although Bluetooth is in its infancy, Smyth says it looks promising for enterprise applications.

Ernst & Young has conducted trials internally on a number of Bluetooth products from different vendors. It now believes the chief benefit of the technology is to make it easy for visitors from outside a company to connect to IT systems.

"We have an area set aside for visiting staff and clients, where we do presentations and have groups of people come in to work together," Smyth explains. There, we want to avoid incompatibility at the connection level. Bluetooth is also very useful for getting away from cables."

The idea of the firm's remote workers connecting to corporate systems wirelessly is realistic, but will take some time to happen in practice, according to Smyth. "We have some 8,000 people, and on an average day 400 might be out of the office, but we are not conducting trials for our remote workers at this time. We would go for more mature products in that area."

Ernst & Young believes Bluetooth has shown a lot of promise. Smyth says, "We have only been trying it in limited areas and for specific purposes, but if we were to roll it out for our client and visitor area it would be welcomed by the people we work with in other countries. We could be ready for that within a year, but only in this limited form."

Ernst & Young has also been testing Bluetooth systems in its security lab. "We have been looking carefully at the security implications of Bluetooth. As with the various versions of [wireless LAN standard] 802.11, there are issues about the confidentiality of data sent via wireless transmission," says Smyth. Regarding the possibility of drive-by hacker attacks, Smyth notes that the security of any system depends on the way it is set up and the mixture of equipment used.

Smyth believes Ernst & Young may make more use of Bluetooth technology in the future. "We are consolidating our offices into one building, so we can look at all these things," he says. Smyth adds that when staff are working in a single location, Bluetooth may be a more attractive option.

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