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| Tech Update
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By Jack Gold
September 5, 2002
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Many personal digital assistants (PDAs) are appearing in enterprises. Although most are currently user-acquired devices, we expect an increasing number to be company-supplied in three to five years. Enterprises must evaluate and plan for PDA total cost of ownership (TCO) and assess the impact PDAs will have on cost of operations.
Meta trend: Through 2003, integration and extension of mobile, wireless, and enterprise applications will require specialized IT skills and resources. By 2004/05, mainstream application platforms will incorporate pervasive middleware, consolidating the market and requiring tradeoffs between short- and long-term strategies. By 2006, wireless access to enterprise applications and portals will be common, with solutions supporting smart and thin clients, synchronized for connected and disconnected users.
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Currently, more than 80 percent of PDAs in enterprises are purchased by end users and brought into the organization for use as personal information managers (PIMs). Most organizations provide minimal or no formal support for these devices, relying instead on "shadow support" (for example, individual users and colleagues assisting each other). Many companies believe that, in this way, PDAs are costing the organization nothing. Shadow support costs are hard to measure, but certainly having a knowledge worker spend one to two hours with another knowledge worker in setting up, connecting, and training a naive user in the intricacies of a PDA is not a productive use of either worker's time (nor is it "free" to the company).
We expect the informality and/or ambivalence most companies currently exhibit toward PDAs to change during the next three to five years. By 2006/07, we expect 25 to 30 percent of enterprise-deployed PDAs to be purchased (or reimbursed) by the enterprise and provided to the user. Further, we expect nearly all enterprises to have a formalized support plan for users (whether users are provided with a device or they acquire and utilize one themselves). The first step in this process is the need for companies to establish an enterprise PDA policy.
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