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Is that a notebook killer in your pocket?

By Toni Kistner
Net.Worker, 04/30/01

With the tech sector in such a slump, ROI is coming back in style. And the news couldn't be better for Research in Motion, manufacturer of the BlackBerry wireless corporate e-mail/PDA device.

While Net.Worker recently touted BlackBerry's strong security and productivity benefits in a recent story, the potential return on investment gains are fast stealing the show. In fact, investment banking firm Goldman Sachs recently upped its mobile Internet enterprise forecast from $13 billion to $20 billion by 2005 - based wholly on the ROI gains of "always-on network devices." The emerging category is lead by RIM, but the industry expects Palm to produce a rival by year-end.

In the recently released report "PDAs Storm the Enterprise," Goldman Sachs surveyed 175 notebook users who were issued BlackBerries. The results are nothing short of startling. After six months, notebook usage dropped by 45%, from 12.3 hours/month to 6.8 hours/month. The power users in the group - those whose usage ranked in the top 25% - decreased notebook usage by 70%, from 23.9 hours/month to 7.3 hours/month. But if that's not enough, 19% of those surveyed stopped using their notebooks altogether.

Cutting down laptop usage is no trivial accomplishment. Goldman Sachs estimates that the total cost of ownership of a BlackBerry device is $2,000 per user, per year. In contrast, the total cost of ownership of an enterprise laptop is $9,700 per user per year - that's five times the cost to deploy and support. The introduction of the BlackBerry also significantly lowered the usage of other equipment such as cellphones, fax machines and voicemail, the report found.

While most companies still view wireless e-mail as a luxury rather than part of a mission-critical strategy, that's bound to change - and fast. Today, a few savvy network professionals view their ROI gains almost as a best-kept secret.

HiddenMind Technology, one of the companies we interviewed, cut its corporate cellphone usage in half by issuing BlackBerries. And the Los Angeles law firm Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker LLP, has reduced its laptop assignments by 40% and the number of toll-free calls to company voicemail and the corporate network by half, boasts firm CIO Mary Odson.

Before issuing BlackBerries 18 months ago, Odson maintained about 300 notebooks for 400 attorneys - notebooks she had to upgrade every 12 to 15 months. Today, only 25% of her attorneys use dedicated notebooks. When the other 75% travel, they take their BlackBerries and sign out one from the small pool of notebooks Odson maintains. The firm also uses a universal inbox application that works with the BlackBerry server, allowing attorneys to get their voicemail, faxes and e-mail on the device, obviating the need to issue attorneys cellphones.

At first glance it looks like RIM is poised to take a big bite out of the notebook market. Then again, firms like Odson's plan to refresh desktop PCs with laptops, so maybe it's the desktop PC manufacturers who have the most to lose by RIM's rising star.