Jason Turcotte, owner and president of Turcotte Data and Design in Ware, specializes in network implementation, including on the mobile front.

Turcotte works extensively with the law enforcement community, and has an interesting perspective on the mobile technology boom. He's actually been working with many of the popular applications for some time, and says that in some ways, police departments have been the pioneers with regard to several trends.

"They were the ones who started the whole trend of mobile laptops and wireless access," he said, referencing the units present in most police cruisers. "They've been using that technology for years, and now it's only getting more robust."

Turcotte said many other businesses are beginning to see the benefits of such technology, once reserved for specific vocations. He said his own business is getting busier, and he's adding a greater number of private clients each month.

"What I'm trying to get other businesses to understand is that they can have the same technology," he said, noting that as the gap between computer and cellular technology narrows, having information at one's fingertips anytime and anywhere is becoming less a luxury than it is a necessity.

"All major cellular carriers have wireless data cards available for laptops, and programs to access a computer file through a phone. As long as there is a cellular signal, we can be anywhere we need to be, with all the information we need."

Turcotte went on to add that as technology improves, wireless access is becoming vital to businesses of all sizes, in order to keep pace with the competition.

"We're hearing a lot about remote desktop capability and VPN (virtual private network) access to files on a company's server," he said. "It goes back to that same idea of being able to locate files from anywhere.

"There is an initial investment in hardware to take into account, but now more than ever that investment is going to save businesses, especially small businesses, money overall."

This article by Jaclyn Stevenson, reprinted from Business West Magazine

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