EDS and Vodafone have announced the IT industry's first large-scale global deployment of a fully managed mobility service with the launch of a managed BlackBerry service for ABN Amro Bank of the Netherlands.
The new service, utilising EDS’ Extended Connected Office (ECO) managed mobility solution connects ABN Amro staff to the Vodafone network for anytime, anywhere access to e-mail, calendars, contacts, task lists, corporate intranet and the Internet.
"We're delivering a truly mobile extension of the enterprise, moving the corporate desktop into the wireless world, while maintaining the consistency, stability and security of a fully managed desktop environment," says Bill Crawford, global offering executive, EDS Mobility Services. "And we deliver the service using existing resources."
In a pilot, bank employees worked via their wireless devices an average of 48 minutes each working day and 40 minutes on weekends. Ninety-six percent of the users stated the device significantly improved their business effectiveness. Forty-four percent reported direct revenue gains as a result of their increased responsiveness.
The results concur with a recent study by consulting firm A.T. Kearney, which indicated that having secure, around-the-clock access to corporate data can increase employee productivity as much as 30%.
Although the ABN Amro deployment is currently limited to BlackBerrys, the managed service can also support PDAs, cell phones and smart phones.