Comments on: Forrester is Wrong

By: Lionemom

Lionemom — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 03:12:11 +0000

brewcaster, I DISAGREE with your opinions about IT Business needs. I, too, am an IT professional and I support almost three hundred Nextel push-to-talk users and more than sixty Crackberry users. I have users that hate, hate, hate, the crackberry because it isn’t intuitive to use whatsoever. Being PC users, nothing in the operating system of the blackberry is similar at all to Windows.

I STRONGLY disagree with your statement that business tools are not about features and “exciting UI experiences. If your users hate the tools, they simply will not use them. We would campaign for using the iPhone if our central IT department supported it (they presently do not.) But being that my department is an extremity of the central IT, we don’t make those decisions.

Within 3 years, we WILL support the iPhone simply out of necessity because we are a higher education institution and we will HAVE to because students already have them. When that happens, I am confident that we will have strong employee support to replace our crackberries with the iPhone. And I will totally support that.

By: Mitch McDad

Mitch McDad — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 05:50:27 +0000

My wife has a Crackberry and she give MY left…you know.. for my iPhone but her company won’t support it.

By: PTC

PTC — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 19:29:38 +0000

Maturity, security, and switching costs.

Give Forrester another five years. Then give the Fortune 1000 another five on top of that one.

By: Allen

Allen — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 04:04:07 +0000

brewcaster, comments like this are why business users almost universally hate their IT departments. Lacking features and “exciting UI experiences” really equals “doesn’t do what I need it to do” and “sucks to use those capabilities it does have.”

Until you guys understand that usability and usefulness are the keys to productivity, your users will keep ignoring your rules and getting themselves the tools they need to succeed.

By: brewcaster

brewcaster — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 21:56:44 +0000

I think that article lays it all out completely. Having worked in IT for many years, I think your analysis is a little off.

IT departments, LOVE devices that are easy to manage. The iPhone offers no possibilities of central management. This is a problem that plagues Apple’s products when faced with enterprise integration. One of IT’s main objectives is security. If it can’t be secured, they won’t/can’t support it being used in the company.

The blackberry model has been the winner in the corporate world for these reasons. They allow IT depts to encrypt the data, and also apply centrally controlled lock-down rules on the devices. True, they have lacked features and “exciting UI experiences” but that is not what business tools are about. This is why Windows is still the most used Corporate platform, that and software compatibility.

The iPhone is an awesome consumer electronic device, much like the Apple computers. But are dismal corporate/business tools for larger organizations.