Windows Mobile & Blackberry

When deploying mobile technology, think beyond the devices themselves and consider how they will integrate into your infrastructure.

It's important to make this decision in the context of their wider responsibilities, rather than solely by looking at the devices or the operating systems themselves. This means thinking about four key aspects when comparing these mobile platforms: infrastructure, support, integration, and availability of both custom and third-party applications.

Simply put, because BlackBerry devices require their own server, deploying them adds more than an incremental number of infrastructure components to the business. Deploying additional hardware, of course, has ramifications in other parts of the IT department. More hardware deployed means more servers to manage, and more support costs.

Integration. Windows Mobile technology is already tightly integrated with Exchange Server's mobile support technology. Exchange ActiveSync is a communication protocol providing wireless access for users to download e-mail messages, schedules, contacts, tasks lists, and other Exchange Server mailbox data, without incurring service fees or added middleware costs such as BES needed for Blackberry.

Application Availability. Software equivalents to Microsoft Office are among the most popular downloads for BlackBerry devices; however, these must be purchased, while mobile versions of Office applications are most often included with the purchase of Windows Mobile devices.

Total Cost of Ownership. when the Wipro PSA practice compared Windows Mobile devices to BlackBerry devices in May 2007, it found that the TCO for the latter were anywhere from 16 percent to 28 percent higher, depending on the size of the company (for enterprises with more than 1,000 employees, the percentage ranged from 16 to 22 percent).

Clearly, the smoothest path in the deployment of mobile devices comes when enterprises choose a platform that's already carefully and intentionally integrated into their current corporate infrastructure. To do otherwise adds additional costs for training, management, and user support.

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