Slow but sure enterprise adoption for PDAs

From...

By Winnie Lai

(IDG) -- The growing commercial adoption of personal digital assistants (PDAs) is slowly gaining ground among corporate IT departments, according to industry observers.

"We're seeing a quick uptake in making PDAs a formal standard for support in enterprises," said Craig Will, Asia-Pacific vice president at Palm Inc.

"More and more people are bringing in their PDAs for use in the workplace, corporate IT departments feel that this is something they need to support," he added.

In a survey released by U.S.-based research firm Evans Data Corp. in December, 46 percent of 400 IT managers polled said they will undertake development of wireless applications for their business this year.

However, despite the keen interest expressed by the market, actual enterprise deployment has not happened as quickly as expected, largely due to pessimistic market sentiment, according to Manny Lopez, market analyst for personal systems research at International Data Corp.

IDG.net INFOCENTER ITWorld.com home ITWorld.com Webcasts ITWorld.com forums Free e-mail newsletters Related IDG.net Stories Posh PDAs for big spenders Penguin in your pocket Palm unveils 'BlackBerry killer' Features PC World.com Product Finder All about Microsoft .Net Top 10 rules for e-business success Visit an IDG site Choose a site: IDG.net CIO Computerworld Darwin Dummies.com GamePro.com The Industry Standard ITWorld.com InfoWorld.com JavaWorld LinuxWorld Macworld Online Network World Fusion PC World Publish.com UnixInsider IDG.net search

"Enterprises are talking a lot about it. But infrastructurewise, I don't see large enterprises doing much things," Lopez said. "[The wireless infrastructure] is a good-to-have, but not essential in view of the present market situation," he added.

According to the Evans Data survey, the wireless applications under consideration include corporate portals where employees can access company documents and information wirelessly from any Web browser, as well as wireless services for remotely accessing corporate e-mail and other business services.

Roughly half of the respondents that are planning wireless development projects will start with corporate e-mail. Also approximately half said they will build a corporate instant messaging system and about 28 percent will build some type of wireless portal for retrieving corporate data remotely, the report found.

More advanced wireless applications are also finding new appeal in the corporation. About 26 percent of the IT managers polled said they are working to build wireless connectivity to sales force automation systems. Wireless access to CRM (customer relationship management) and ERP (enterprise resource management) systems were also identified as areas of interest.

Palm's Will echoed Evans Data's findings, confirming that among the corporate users for the PDA manufacturer, mobile sales force management and CRM are the most popular applications being deployed, especially by the finance, pharmaceutical, logistics and fast moving consumer goods sectors. In particular, the rollout of the GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) network last year accelerated PDA adoption as it allows faster data transfer and easier Internet access, he added.

In Hong Kong, frontline staff at the government's Environmental Protection Department, New York Life Insurance and Centaline Property Agency are already deploying Palm for use by their mobile workforce, Will noted.

Nevertheless, while momentum is growing in favor of bringing wireless devices into the workplace, only 30 percent of the respondents to the Evans Data survey said they have budgets for making wireless hardware purchases, the report noted.

"Employees continues to be the prime purchasers for these devices," Lopez agreed.

However, companies that give wireless devices access to corporate networks without proper planning can run into problems, McKendrick warned. Possible security breaches stemming from the use of wireless devices with access to corporate networks is the number one concern among IT managers, according to the survey. Also, companies are finding that properly integrating new wireless devices into existing corporate computing systems isn't easy, the study found. These concerns are compounded by the fact that most of those polled said their companies don't set formal system requirements for employees who purchase wireless devices for the workplace.

"You can imagine the challenges the help desk has when trying to manage all these different devices," McKendrick said.

Matt Berger contributed to this report.