Cost of Ownership Issues

Companies are increasingly looking at device proliferation and connectivity options, and weighing the costs and benefits of going mobile. As noted above, the price/performance ratio of mobile devices is improving steadily thanks to both technology gains and price wars. The current low-end PalmOne device sells for less than 30% of what we remember a similarly equipped model costing three years ago. PalmOne`s web site indicated pricing of $99 for the Zire 21 and $399 for the high end Tungsten T3 in mid-July 2004. Due to recent research published by analyst firms, there is heightened awareness that the total cost of ownership (TCO) of handhelds exceeds the simple cost of the device. The cost of providing support, network connectivity, replacement units, training, and software all contribute. Fortunately, companies can take steps to dramatically reduce the cost of ownership of both laptops and handhelds. Commenting on their computation for TCO, Gartner writes “End-user operation costs represent about 40 percent of all costs, primarily due to the time investment required to keep PDAs synchronized with user desktops or servers.”6 Centrally-managed mobile infrastructure software can mitigate the need for manual device synchronization, thus dramatically reducing TCO by paring back this dominant cost component. Mobile device TCO can be further reduced by enforcing policy management and technology for automatic healing of devices. Because traditional LAN-based systems management tools do not work well for mobile devices and remote connectivity, the mobile infrastructure components must provide the systems management functionality. Payoff on these types of investments is quick and can yield major reductions to TCO. See sidebar. Thus there are a variety of steps that corporations can take to limit mobile device TCO to a reasonable figure. Many are tied to the mobile infrastructure technology that will support any mobile initiatives.