[ Integrated mar.com ]
Managing BlackBerry in enterprises not fun and games
13 August, 2007
By Chris Talbot
When e-mail is down, a job that is normally stressful can become even more so, but when BlackBerry service is down, things can become a nightmare -- especially since the majority of corporate BlackBerry users are middle and senior management.
A new report from Osterman Research, commissioned by Zenprise, found that 95 per cent of the 76 messaging-oriented North American decision-makers that responded to the survey said the senior managers in their organizations have BlackBerry devices. Additionally, 63 per cent of middle managers also have BlackBerry devices. Traveling employees and sales personnel are also BlackBerry users in more than 50 per cent of organizations. The percentages drop significantly below that. Additionally, research suggests that mobile devices in the enterprise will shooting toward the 100 million-user mark by 2010.
"The report and the statistics turned out to be rather interesting," said Ahmed Datoo, vice president of marketing at Zenprise. "What we've seen in terms of the pain of managing the infrastructure, to start off with, we wanted to have a better understanding of who are the people using mobile devices in the enterprises. It turns out that about 95 per cent of the people surveyed said senior managers use it."
BlackBerry use is skewed to executives, and when things go wrong, it's those executives who are breathing down the IT department's proverbial neck. Unfortunately, Datoo said things go wrong with BlackBerry management all too often. Usually when things do go wrong, the problem is usually in the interaction between Exchange and the BlackBerry, but it's also common that it's an end-user problem. Sometimes, though, the carrier or RIM's own BlackBerry network goes down (like on April 18, 2007).
When the carrier or RIM network is down, though, administrators usually find out the hard way -- after they've spent hours doing tests and trying to find the problem in their own systems, Datoo said. There's very rarely a service-level agreement (SLA) in place for BlackBerry service, unlike other mission-critical applications (like Exchange e-mail).
"What we've seen as it relates to SLAs for the BlackBerry side is we haven't seen that sort of coverage," Datoo said.
According to the report, users experience an average of 30 minutes of downtime a month, and with the number of problems with managing BlackBerry devices, the IT people responsible for the management have found that dealing with BlackBerry problems can become a full-time job. There is a lot to managing a BlackBerry network, Datoo said. Zenprise's solution to the problem is a tool that offers a wide view of the BlackBerry network, enabling administrators to view everything related to the management of BlackBerry devices in a graphical interface. Not only does it make it easier to manage, but it also frees up IT time for other projects, Datoo said. The tool offers administrators analysis of problems, as well as a thorough breakdown of how to fix the problem.
BB administrator no FUN
