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Less than 40 Percent of Respondents Express Confidence in their
Mobile Management Platforms
Fremont, CA - April 8, 2009 —Zenprise, Inc., the leader in automating mobile
management, today released findings of an Osterman Research study on “IT Best
Practices: To Support or Not Support Consumer-Owned Smartphones.” The research
finds that most enterprise IT departments are not equipped to handle the rapid increase in
smartphone adoption. Of those surveyed, only two in five expressed confidence that all
elements of their mobile messaging platform are fully protected against downtime.
“Our most surprising finding indicates that IT will be asked to support a greater variety and number mobile platforms, despite a clear lack of confidence in their current mobile
infrastructure,” said Michael Osterman, founder of Osterman Research. “These
juxtaposed positions send a clear signal that IT needs help. Software that can
automatically troubleshoot mobile user issues and simplify management are fast
becoming a staple of the data center.”
Osterman Research forecasts that the proportion of the North American workforce
equipped with employer-supplied mobile devices will double from 23 percent of the
workforce in 2008 to 46 percent by 2011. Along with BlackBerry and Windows Mobile,
demand for iPhone and Symbian-based devices will increase over the next year. As a
result, IT organizations will be required to support this growing complexity on flat or
reduced budgets. If left unmanaged, rapid smartphone adoption can result in serious
problems including lost productivity and revenue, as well as escalating IT support costs.
The survey, prepared by Osterman Research, includes key findings such as:
MOST ARE NOT CONFIDENT IN THEIR ABILITY TO ADDRESS MOBILE
DOWNTIME:
- Only 40 percent of organizations expressed confidence that all elements of their
mobile messaging platform are fully protected against downtime.
- 60 percent of decision makers express modest, minimal or no confidence that they
can protect their mobile infrastructure from downtime.
THE MOBILE INFRASTRUCTURE IS BECOMING MORE
HETEROGENEOUS:
- The number of mobile platforms in use in the workplace is growing, increasing the heterogeneous nature of the mobile management environment. BlackBerry
and Windows Mobile devices will continue to dominate IT organizations’ support
plans for the foreseeable future, although the presence of other devices such as the
iPhone will continue to increase.
- The survey revealed a more than 100 percent increase in support for iPhones and
a 40 percent increase in Symbian-based mobile devices from 2008 to 2009.
- BlackBerry and Windows Mobile continue to thrive with over 75 percent of the
organizations supporting BlackBerry devices and more than 60 percent supporting
Windows Mobile.
DOWNTIME CONTINUES TO BE A SERIOUS PROBLEM:
- While enterprise mobility provides executives with anytime, anywhere access to
corporate information, downtime is still a critical concern for organizations. Over
80 percent of the respondents indicated that downtime would negatively impact
their business.
- Based on an average calculated from survey results, the typical organization
experiences 29 minutes of downtime per month from their BlackBerry
environment, resulting in serious productivity and cost ramifications across an
organization.
SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENTS RARELY EXIST:
- Only 5 percent of organizations currently provide a Service Level Agreement
(SLA) of 99.999 percent availability for their BlackBerry users. This translates to
five or fewer minutes of downtime each year; however, most organizations do not
provide SLAs that offer this level of uptime.
- In fact, 33 percent of organizations do not offer an SLA and have no plans to do
so.
STRONG DEMAND FOR APPLE IPHONE:
- The Apple iPhone continues to make strides in the workplace. Even with 71
percent of organizations reporting strong user interest for BlackBerry devices,
more than half (54 percent) of those surveyed reported demand for iPhones.
- This may create a significant market for hosted services that manage mobile
enterprise environments, or for new software tools that automate mobile
management.
HIGH-PROFILE EMPLOYEES ARE THE LEADING MOBILE USERS:
- High-profile employees – technical senior managers (78 percent), non technical
senior managers (76 percent), traveling employees (65 percent), technical middle
managers (64 percent) and mobile sales-related employees (63 percent) – are the
heaviest users of mobile messaging technologies. This means that an outage or
other problems in the mobile system will result in more serious repercussions for
IT.
“Osterman Research paints a clear picture of the mobile management challenges facing
today’s enterprise,” said Zenprise CEO Jayaram Bhat. “Over the next 12-18 months,
organizations will be pushed to support multiple mobile platforms – all of which have
unique management needs. Our ZenPro automation technology allows companies to
more cost effectively manage multiple platforms. Our customers routinely experience a
55+ percent reduction in calls, and greater than a 75 percent reduction in mean time to
repair.”
Zenprise MobileManager provides a best practices approach to finding and fixing user
issues through its use of automation. Organizations that automate mobile service
management can lower mean time to repair, standardize problem resolution, minimize
support calls and improve overall productivity.
To download a free copy of the report, please visit:
http://www.zenprise.com/OstermanWhitePaper
Survey Methodology
The report was commissioned by Osterman Research and Zenprise. It details quantitative
research with decision makers about their organizations’ messaging systems. More than
125 online surveys were conducted across North America. The sample represents a
strong cross-section of companies ranging in sizes and vertical markets, with an average
of 15,000 employees and email users.
About Zenprise
Zenprise’s award winning software automates mobile management. The software automatically troubleshoots end user issues across BlackBerry®, iPhone, and Windows Mobile environments. Unlike pure monitoring solutions, Zenprise identifies the root cause of end user issues and provides detailed resolution steps to fix these problems. Founded in 2003, Zenprise is headquartered in Fremont, California and is privately held with funding from investors Bay Partners, Ignition Partners, Mayfield Fund, and Shasta Ventures. Zenprise's executive and product teams bring enterprise software experience
from companies such as Mercury, EDS, Zambeel, Bay Networks, and Loudcloud. For more information, go to www.zenprise.com.
About Osterman Research
Osterman Research was founded by Michael Osterman in 2001. Since that time, the
company has become one of the leading analyst firms in the messaging and
collaboration space, providing research, analysis, white papers and other
services to companies like Microsoft, IBM, Google, Yahoo!, Novell, Quest
Software, Hewlett Packard, Dell MessageOne, Proofpoint and many others. The core
of Osterman Research's capabilities is its market research panel of IT
professionals and end users that are regularly surveyed on a variety of topics
related to email, instant messaging, spam, collaboration, security, storage,
archiving, data retention, compliance and other areas. This continually updated
knowledge base of information from decision makers and influencers helps
Osterman Research to understand developments and gain insight into the trends
that affect its clients.
Contact: Hally Wax, Barokas Public Relations, 206-264-8220, zenprise@barokas.com.
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