Critical.
Authoritative.
Strategic.
Subscribe to CIO Magazine »

Blog: BlackBerrys Taking Up More IT Support Time, Effort Than Any Other Mobile Devices??

A recent poll of more than 800 people suggests that IT departments are spending more time and resources supporting Research In Motion (RIM) BlackBerrys than any other mobile devices. In fact, the poll suggests that IT's spending nearly six times as much effort on BlackBerry support than on other mobile gadgets-though there are a number of reasons to question the finding.

The poll question, which was posted on two Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) websites from September 19 to October 26 of last year, was as follows:

"Which of the following mobile devices does your organization's IT department spend the most time and resources supporting?"

Note the question is aimed at anyone who works for an organization with an IT department. And the Web-poll was open to anybody who happened to find there way there. So anyone from personal assistants to CFOs could vote, though it seems unlikely anyone without at least a minor interest in technology would be visiting the CompTIA site.

I think the majority of companies support many more BlackBerrys than they do pagers, MP3 players or Tablet PCs, so it stands to reason that they spend more time on supporting BlackBerrys than these other devices, but what about laptops? I question whether or not the average IT department spends more time on BlackBerry management than they do laptop management. I know I've had far more issues that I couldn't resolve myself without IT assistance related to my ThinkPad T60 than I have with my BlackBerry. (To be fair, I am fairly BlackBerry savvy after reviewing and using various models for quite some time now.)

The poll options also seem a bit off to me. Here's the list of possible answers and the number or respondents' votes they each received:

1. BlackBerrys: 65.7 percent
2. Pagers: 10.9 percent
3. Digital Music Players: 4.5 percent
4. Handheld Computers: 4 percent
5. PDAs: 2.9 percent
6. Cell Phones 2.6 percent
7. iPhones: 2.3 percent
8. Laptop Computers: 2 percent
9. Smartphones: 0.5 percent
10. Tablet PCs: 0.5 percent
11. Other: 4 percent

First of all, who uses pagers anymore? And what IT departments support them? If you use a pager or you are an IT staffer who supports them, please drop me a comment on this post and let me know what you use them for.

Secondly, many of the 11 possible answers could fall into a single category. For instance, a BlackBerry is a handheld computer, a digital music player, a smartphone and a cell phone. The same can be said for iPhones. And there was no definition for each option provided on the CompTIA site, so that kind of skews the results.

I also don't know of too many IT departments that support standalone digital music players or iPods, do you? Including digital music players as an option in the poll seems bizarre, as well. But that's just me.

What do you think? Does your IT department spend more time managing BlackBerrys than any other mobile devices?

If not, do you use any BlackBerry troubleshooting or issue resolution products, like Zenprise for BlackBerry? And which mobile devices do you spend the most time supporting?

Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.

More about: BlackBerry, CompTIA, Computing Technology Industry Association, Motion, RIM

Comments

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
Users posting comments agree to the CIO comments policy.
Login or register to link comments to your user profile, or you may also post a comment without being logged in.
Related Whitepapers
Latest Stories
Community Comments
Latest Blog Posts
Whitepapers
  • Cost Effective Security and Compliance with Oracle Database 11g Release 2
    Information ranging from trade secrets to financial data to privacy related information has become the target of sophisticated attacks from both sides of the firewall. Built upon 30 years of security experience, the Oracle database provides defense-in-depth security controls that enable organizations to transparently protect data. By leveraging these controls, organizations can safeguard data, ensure regulatory compliance, and achieve business goals such as consolidation, globalization, right sourcing and cloud computing while still maintaining scalability, performance and availability. Read this whitepaper.
    Learn more »
  • Oracle x86 Rack Servers Optimized for Rapid Deployments and Operational Efficiency
    Business-critical and mission-critical workloads — demanding applications and databases — require stable and secure environments. When these types of workloads are deployed on x86 servers, the need to ensure business continuity, maximum uptime, and consistent processing means that IT managers and business unit managers are looking at enterprise x86 servers in a new way: They realize that the business depends on these servers and that x86 server platforms for the enterprise are no longer expendable, as they might have been when servers were dedicated to a single application — or when they were deployed as small Web servers that could be easily taken offline and replaced.
    Learn more »
  • 10 Essential Steps to Web Security
    This short guide outlines 10 simple steps to best practice in web security. Follow them all to step up your organisation’s information security and stay ahead of your competitors. But remember that the target never stands still. Focus on the principles behind the steps – policy, vigilance, simplification, automation and transparency – to keep your information security bang up to date.
    Learn more »
All whitepapers
rhs_login_lockGet exclusive access to Invitation only events CIO, reports & analysis.
Recent comments