It sounds like it should be easy enough; after all, you've had that wired network in place for years, and you've been deploying wireless devices on the WLAN recently. But as experts explain, melding the wired and wireless to unify networking, reduce costs, increase security and gain overall efficiency isn't going to be quick and easy. The reason? For starters, vendors are key to making it happen and interoperability hasn't been a focus for most. There is a promising standard on the horizon--Internet Protocol for Multimedia Subsystems (IMS)--which some view as a bridge for true convergence. What IT leaders need to do now is get a good look at what the vendors are planning to do, the capabilities they're aiming to provide and determine what price point makes the job feasible and viable for the business.

For more on combining wired and wireless:
- read this article [1] at Networking Pipeline