Posted Date: 7/2/2009

And The Survey Says

THE TOP PAIN POINTS AROUND:


Corporate-Owned Smartphones

1. Application Clutter. Among the issues, according to these respondents:

• "Not being able to control app downloads easily, resulting in high memory use on the BlackBerry, which then creates helpdesk ticket calls on why their email/call logs are disappearing."
• "Downloading of many commercially available apps that would be useful in the conduct of business are locked out by IT policy.
  
  

2. Device Lifecycle & Support. Lack of choice is an oft-cited complaint. Other challenges: dealing with breakage, software updates, and firmware upgrades. This respondent sums things up:
It's a challenge to 'make' a corporate-owned device 'last' [through the course of] its 18-24 month life cycle, because of envy or perceived position within the company...We have a drawer full of BlackBerry 7250s we sell back to the carrier for $5 a piece." For this respondent it's about "More and more employees wanting to bring [in] their own devices and connect to our BES or Good (or even Active Sync). We have no good way to manage/support these types of users."

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Individual-Owned Smartphones

1. Expense. It's a big factor among these users. According to this respondent, the biggest challenge is "The cost of having RIM devices in my network. Too many servers. Microsoft Active Sync is much cheaper to support in our enterprise."

2. Compliance. This respondent worries about the comfort level of employees in making sure they're corporate-compliant: "We just announced our new Smartphone strategy, transitioning from company owned BlackBerrys to individually owned -- restricted to platforms that can communicate with Microsoft Active Sync and accept our policies. "We expect our biggest challenge to be the comfort level of employees certifying online to comply to a company policy regarding data privacy and security protection."

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Having A Combination Of Both In Your Enterprise

1. Security. This respondent sums things up: "We allow personal devices to sync to desktops but specifically BAN iPhone/iPod, all Symbian, and personal BlackBerry devices based on copyright and security issues." This end user reflects on an apparent disconnect:"In the corporate IT view, losing a smart phone with relatively a small number of messages in it is paramount to a major disaster, but losing a laptop with hundreds of emails within locally stored PST's is viewed as a non-issue."

2. Device Management & Support. Unrealistic user support expectations are a bane to these IT departments. Notes this respondent: "When a smartphone is used in conjunction with corporate products (email or other applications) the expectation is that the corporation is now the help desk for everything related to the devices. This includes non-corporate applications or general troubleshooting related to any problem with the device, regardless of whether or not the device was provided by your corporation or purchased by the individual."