Rugged devices aren’t commonly known in the SA marketplace.
ITWeb, in partnership with Dell Technologies’ authorised distributor Pinnacle ICT, conducted an online survey on the current state of adoption and the appetite for rugged devices among SA businesses as well as local IT resellers.
The survey hoped to establish the interest in these types of devices as well as how much respondents know about them.
Almost half (44%) of reseller respondents offer rugged devices as part of their product portfolio, while 39% of respondents say they don’t but are considering it.
Asked to list the top features that their customers would look for in a rugged device, respondents ranked shock and vibration protection (72%) and temperature and humidity tolerance (51%) as top considerations.
However, 60% of respondents felt that the cost of ownership of rugged devices was higher than normal devices.
Nearly half (46%) of respondents from end-user organisations provide rugged devices to employees; 43% don’t but are considering it. On the other hand, almost three-quarters (71%) of respondents from end-user organisations believe that having a rugged device would improve employees’ productivity and user experience.
According to the survey, there's room for improvement when it comes to user experience with IT – only 11% of respondents from end-user organisations rate their experience with the computing devices provided by their company as 'excellent', while 41% rated it as 'good'. This means that 48% feel it is between average and poor.
Here are some more findings:
- What is the single most compelling quality of a rugged device?
1. Durability (57%)
2. Field productivity (27%)
3. Value for money (13%) - What are the top features that customers would look for in a rugged device? respondents ranked the following five as most important
1. Shock and vibration protection (72%)
2. Temperature and humidity (51%)
3. Minimal size, weight and power (SWaP) (36%)
4. Resistance to corrosion and abrasion (31%)
5. Ingress protection (22%)
- Rate your experience with the computing devices /provided by your company
- Excellent 11%
- Good 41%
- Average 28%
- Acceptable 13%
- Poor 7%
ABOUT THE SURVEY
A total of 119 valid responses were captured, with 69% of respondents being at executive and middle management level, working in a range of major industry sectors. Some 46% of respondents came from the IT sector while 8% came from the telecommunications sector, 7% from education and 6% from government.
Over a third (37%) of the survey’s respondents came from end-user organisations, 33% came from resellers and 16% came from systems integrators.
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