The key to making the right technology decisions and to making these projects go smoothly is to have a strong strategy and a detailed plan in place before implementing a solution.
Preparation is even more important when building a wireless infrastructure.
Because wireless products must, by design, touch many different parts of your enterprise environment, extra diligence is necessary to make sure all goes as planned. For example, if your enterprise network is built on Cisco routers and switches, you must make sure that the wireless base stations will interoperate correctly with them. You don't necessarily have to use the same vendor for wireless as you do for your existing infrastructure, but if the components don't work together properly, you're setting yourself up for trouble down the road. Thinking about these interactions ahead of time can save time and money during the implementation and ongoing maintenance phases. Probably the most important factor to consider is whether the products you choose are supported by your network management framework, whether it be CA Unicenter, Tivoli, HP OpenView, or whatever your company's network management tool may be.