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November 23, 1998

Mobility Matters

IT managers are increasing their mobile device budgets but want more from handhelds and palmtops

By Tom Davey and Jeff Sweat

Illustration by Lydia Hess

usiness users are going mobile in ever-larger numbers, and IT managers are ramping up to meet their needs. In a recent InformationWeek Research survey of 200 managers, nearly one-third of the respondents said their budgets for handheld computers and palmtop devices will rise in the next 12 months, while nearly half said that was true for notebooks.

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Of course, IT managers have long considered it a priority to supply road-bound employees and telecommuters with notebook computers, and to get them adequate access to their bases of operation. But handhelds, which have keyboards and often run the Windows CE operating system, and palmtops, which require pen input, now have a shot at playing a bigger role in businesses, too. Chalk that up in part to the increasing availability of enterprise resource planning, database, data support, sales-force automation, and other client applications for these platforms from companies such as Oracle, SAP, and Sybase.

Currently, just 2% of users have handhelds and 4% have palmtops (see chart, above). This is partly because of their tiny screens and limited memory for running applications, but also because some IT users have viewed them only as contact managers. "Today, their value is as a scheduling device, and I guess that's not seen as real mission-critical," confirms Mark Brown, an end-user support manager for services vendor EDS, who handles the outsourced IT operation at hard-drive manufacturer Maxtor Inc.

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This has all led to a mediocre return on investment. IT managers' satisfaction with the devices' demonstrated business benefits is tepid when compared with notebooks, according to the survey (see chart). Of sites with a significant number of handheld and palmtop devices (such as 3Com's PalmPilot series), only 29% among the 49 companies with both handhelds and notebooks said these mobile systems provide a higher ROI than desktop PCs, and just 33% among the 82 businesses that have both palmtops and notebooks said the same.

But that poor ROI may not last much longer. For instance, discussions such as those between 3Com and several sales-force automation vendors could produce applications that help companies improve the productivity of their mobile sales staffs. The Caribbean Latin American unit of Nortel Networks, for instance, is adopting Palm III palmtops for its sales, engineering, and installation staffs. Notebooks are too cumbersome an option for the Sunrise, Fla., division's employees, who travel extensively in the Caribbean. But salespeople still need access to business data, and engineers must be able to track repair assignments. "It's crucial that we travel light and maintain accurate information, since we're so mobile," says Martine Chernakov, wireless project coordinator for Nortel CALA.

Similarly, at Trident Data Systems, director of technology Todd Allaria predicts that 15% to 20% of his company's users will be equipped with a handheld or palmtop device for key business purposes within a year. That's up from less than 5% now.

Allaria says running Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server database clients on these systems is a real possibility for the Los Angeles provider of network firewalls, data encryption, and other information protection services. "We're looking at pushing out custom databases to our sales force and engineers in the field," he says, and those users would prefer to work with very lightweight mobile devices.

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Going Wireless
To really benefit from these applications, however, IT managers will need to support wireless access to data from palmtops and handhelds. "There are no real obstacles left for ERP and other applications to work on these mobile devices, but wireless makes it much more compelling," says analyst Rob Enderle of Giga Information Group.

Because these devices are easy to carry and use simultaneously, and also offer instant-on capabilities, they are a natural fit for remote users who need to interact with a company intranet, the Internet, or a private service while walking through warehouses, standing in hotel lobbies, or working in other places where phone jacks aren't available or would limit mobility, say users.

Bankers Trust New York Corp., for instance, has adopted PalmPilots connected to Novatel Inc.'s Minstrel wireless modem, running an application developed by Aether Technology Inc. that feeds its equity analysts stock prices and news, and lets them react to that information.