Defending RIM Blackberry Against Productivity

Jasksk writes "Is Blackberry causing masses to lose productivity? This article on CoolTechZone.com clears the myth. The author writes, 'Ever since the patent litigation has settled between NTP and RIM, Blackberry has recaptured the headlines, but this time, it's because of the device itself. While numerous users, generally corporate executives, adore the device, the environment surrounding Blackberry isn't too positive. A number of recent reports and columns are portraying Blackberry (and similar solutions) as time wasting, productivity lowering behemoths that don't deserve to exist.'"

Comments

I find them to be distracting...

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

A few people in our organization have them and I find them (the devices) to be somewhat distracting. During meetings, I see coworkers constantly, not so covertly, glancing down to IM someone, read their mail, or mostly check stock quotes. However, I suppose this is mostly a cultural issue. Here in North America, that would be considered rude. When I'm in China, I notice that people don't think twice about stopping mid-sentence to take a call or read an incoming IM. When I asked a few people about the practice, they seemed genuinely puzzled by the question and said that it wasn't considered rude or out of the ordinary at all. So I guess the answer is "it depends on where you are." :-)

as a Blackberry admin...

[CheechBG]

I can tell you that these things are a pain in the ass. Not so much from a technology standpoint, but mainly from the users. I get calls all the time: "My blackberry didn't receive this email in 2.3 seconds, the system is down, FIX THIS NOW!!!"

There is a certain threshold that exists between productive and slave. Slavery, indentured or not, exists when you are inextricably bound to your employer, and have to respond immediately to his commands, on demand, 24/7. At least in my office, with most of the BB users, that line has been crossed.

From a technology standpoint, Blackberry Enterprise Server isn't really THAT bad, I just wish there would be more QA from RIM's developers. Hotfixes and service packs come out far too often, but at least they are trying.

Blackberry is part of the problem

[murdocj]

At my last job, people in our parent office were addicted to various forms of "multitasking" including reading their email during meetings, answering the blackberries, etc. The only problem was that they weren't multitasking, they were unitasking and not paying attention to the current situation, which meant that the meeting was useless. They seemed to be incapable for focusing on a single topic for more than a couple of minutes.

The funniest thing was when the uber-development boss, who was the worst offender, both in showing up late to meetings and not paying attention, decided that his particular meeting was critical and that laptops, blackberries, etc would be forbidden. Of course, then he pulled out his blackberry at the first meeting.

Re:Well

[arivanov]

While what you say is true in principle the reality does not get even close.

In order to prioritise on BB you need to have perfect or nearly perfect mail delivery filters that are guaranteed to be applied prior to the mail being picked up by BES. Not a single one of the corporate email systems officially supported by BES is even close to fitting this description. Exchange has always been a piece of sh** as far as filtering is concerned (regexps in an exchange filter on a custom field anyone?), Lotus is not much better and Group(un)wise is not far off from either one of these.

So in reality you get all of your emails, get distracted, interrupted, your concentration broken and after that you can prioritise.

Err.. No... Thanks... I like to be disturbed only when there is a real emergency. This is best done with an email-to-SMS interface.

First - it is 20+ times cheaper to run per user.

Second - it can be made to rely on a single box to run - the mail server. For comparison, BB in order to operate requires your email infrastructure to run properly, your firewall infrastructure to run properly, the Internet connectivity to run properly, BES to run properly, RIM itself to run properly and the GSM operator internet connectivity to run properly. That is a fat and long bill of materials for an emergency warning system. Definitely too long to my liking.

By the way, out of all obvious targets RIM is the only one yet to be hit with a good oldfashioned DDOS. It will be entertaining to watch the congresscritters jump up and down when it finally happens (provided that you are not the person responsible for running BES in your company).