Handheld Havoc Burning Enterprises

ZDNet Australia reports on a recently held seminar in Sydney on the future of mobile enterprise computing. According to Ken Delaney at Gartner told the audience that "You're going to get lots of different devices, and you're going to have to back up and worry about the software rather than the hardware. You can no longer build systems to last; you have to build systems to change. We're not going to get full convergence."

Delaney believes that despite attempts to deliver devices that do everything for eceryone, no single standard was likley. "We will not see physical convergence, but we will see prioritisation by device," he predicted. In addition, he mentioned that "If you were to go to Japan and buy a mobile phone, you would be offered a choice of between 300 and 400. That's coming to Australia, and that scenario wreaks havoc with the enterprise."

Delaney also warns that "Palm will be less and less an enterprise player. If you are on Palm OS for an application, it's probably time to think about something else."

For obvious reasons, these are not the things IT wants to hear..