At Texas Instruments, Bonner set up a group for testing mobile devices three years ago. By design, it’s a combination of average users from marketing, sales and other knowledge workers, as well as some technical staffers. “You don’t just want gearheads,” he agrees.

Bonner’s group has been able to keep tabs on the needs of the users and decide on appropriate devices and testing mechanisms. For example, the group discovered that because TI is a global operation, any new smart phone would need functionality that could work for both voice and data all over the globe. “And when they traveled,” says Bonner, “people wanted to carry just one device.”

Segmenting your employees also allows CIOs to designate who will get what device, as well as what kind of access to the network and applications each employee will have. “You don’t just willy-nilly give the devices out. You have to do the proper requirements analysis [of each group],” says Burton Group’s Maiwald.

When Less Is More

Today’s users are clamoring for even greater wireless access to corporate databases. Gartner estimates that 60 percent of Global 2000 workers have mobile access to corporate applications.

So does the executive suite really need souped-up laptops with access to CRM and the latest finance metrics, or can they make do with just a BlackBerry or Treo with e-mail and calendar access? “Most executives are oblivious to the security challenges,” Ovum’s Entner says. “You have to disarm all the security stuff because the executive can’t figure out how to work it.”

Therefore, less device (and less functionality) is becoming the norm, though security challenges persist because the smaller the device in physical size, the more easily it can be lost. Just because a device may be small doesn’t mean it’s any less important to secure.

At UPS, Killeen, as well as most of the top executives, have recently switched from laptops to either a BlackBerry or Treo handheld for purely functional reasons—the new devices enable execs to securely and easily check their e-mail, schedules and the Web, and make phone calls. Killeen’s segmentation plan is simple: If the user’s primary need is to access e-mail and the Web, she gets a smart phone. If the user needs to access business applications to do her job, she gets a laptop. “I don’t use my laptop any longer,” says Killeen, who has deployed about 3,000 BlackBerrys and 500 Treos.

Killeen has rolled out BlackBerrys to 1,800 field technicians in UPS’s 2,400 facilities. “Before, they were running around with what we called utility belts—cell phones, pagers, all kinds of devices,” says Killeen. The BlackBerry performs all those various devices’ functions—voice, e-mail, access to intranet and work orders—in one device, and Killeen says the drivers are able to accomplish more while reducing wireless expenses by more than 10 percent.