What businesses really think of mobile email
Published: 26 Jun 2007 12:20 BST
...users are more likely to be senior managers who decided to deploy the technology for their own usage.
As to which particular offerings respondents favoured, about three quarters opted for Research in Motion's (RIM) BlackBerry system. This was particularly marked among large enterprises in vertical markets such as finance, banking and government. Three quarters of BlackBerry users also preferred to have RIM client software running on a RIM handset, rather than on hardware from third-party providers.
But many companies appeared to have more than one push email device supplier anyway. About half of respondents also equipped their employees with a Microsoft Direct Push client offering, while about a third — mainly smaller companies — employed POP3-based systems.
Paskins said: "We could speculate that RIM devices for BlackBerry use have been available for longer than those of other manufacturers. As we are analysing installed-base figures, older devices are more likely to be RIM ones and this would, therefore, influence the results. If we had analysed only recent sales, the results might have been different."
When looking at back-end servers to power the clients, the most popular, unsurprisingly, was the BlackBerry Enterprise Server for Microsoft Exchange. Microsoft Direct Push and Exchange 2003 came in second, with BlackBerry Enterprise Server for IBM Lotus Domino being next in line.
But, despite the apparent popularity of push email, there are certain important barriers to adoption. Of those organisations that had chosen not to go down this avenue, 45 percent indicated they were satisfied with their existing communications system and saw no need to switch.
About 38 percent saw the cost involved in running such devices as a big obstacle, while 28 percent said that they had experienced no demand from end-users. However, around a third of non-users indicated that they had not yet evaluated the technology, opening up the possibility that they might choose to do so in future.
Similar reasons prevailed for those companies that had introduced the technology but were unsure about rolling it out among larger groups of users. About 57 percent felt that cost was a constraint, with a further quarter citing existing pricing structures as an issue.
Some 37 percent voiced security concerns, while 31 percent were unable to identify a business requirement for broader adoption. Others felt that increased pressure on staff was also an important factor against wider uptake.
As to what improvements respondents would like to see in their existing push email systems, only 87 out of the total 311 questioned gave an answer. Of these, 15 percent requested faster download and upload speeds or data compression capabilities in order to improve delivery times for large data files and other sources of information.
Another nine percent were keen to see costs come down, seven percent wanted better synchronisation facilities and six percent thought improved spam control and filtering would be of benefit.
The 311 companies that responded to the online survey were of a range of different sizes. They included SOHO businesses with one to 10 staff, comprising 20 percent of the sample, and large corporations with more than 1,000 employees, accounting for 33 percent of the total.
Previous
- Thinking out of the inbox
- What businesses really think of mobile email
- When push email comes to shove
- Vendorboard: Must-haves for mobile email
- Buyer's Guide: smartphones for business
- Research shows push email on the rise
- Research: Key trends in mobile push email
- Video: How companies use push email
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