[fowljr]

It seems like the iPad was able to do from its release what the iPhone is only now to see any success with…namely finding acceptance in the Business world. The iPhone’s original and ongoing security problems, in addition to Apple’s reluctance to give Enterprise IT departments the amount of control over iPhones and their software that they prefer, have kept the device out of many businesses. That is finally changing, but due more to user demand than iPhone improvements.

The iPad seems to have suffered from none of the same handicaps, being tapped early as an important IT tool for remote network access. If IT departments themselves are using the iPad, they can’t very well deny them to their users, so iPads are becoming a favorite for remote workers and business travelers. As such, vendors which cater to remote solutions such as Citrix are racing to create use cases for tablets, taking into account upcoming models running Windows and Android.

(...) Read the rest of Tablets Impacting the Enterprise (571 words)

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[Mod74]

I don't see how far they'll get without offering Flash. Several of our corporate systems use it in one form or another, particularly online training.

I'm not sure how much appetite there really is from corporate IT departments to jump at supporting an entirely new architecture when Win7 pads are just around the corner from the HPs and Dells they're used to buying from.

[fowljr]

You probably have a point there Mod74, most Enterprises have a heavy investment in Microsoft arhctecture, I know we do at work.

[iMe]

We only have one system that uses Flash and that has a good enough API set to make creating a standalone iOS app easy enough if we feel the need. More and more of the big vendors are offering iPhone apps (SAP for example) and so would obviously be compatible with the iPad too.

However I don't see any immediate push towards slates or tablets for the enterprise, Win7 isn't designed for the format so will be a cludge, iPad isn't compatible enough with enterprise apps and Android isn't as user friendly as iOS (in most enterprises around 75% of users are not computer literate!).

The big shift will come as more companies move away from providing their users with hardware, I think BT are one of the leading proponents of this approach at the moment. If you make all your back end systems widely compatible with web standards and then give employees c£500 allowance to buy their own hardware I can see a time when some people will just buy a slate and a keyboard rather than a wildly over specced computer for the majority of users. We replaced 400+ desktop PC's at the back end of last year that were just 4 years old, I'd say that at least 50% of those PC's are only ever used for MS Office/Outlook/Browser and we are a design engineering company and are therefore unusually high end in our usage. Our latest contract would see us replacing them again in 3 years time, seems a bit pointless.

[Mod74]

There's something of a small but significant shift to thin clients and things like Google docs. Even if they're currently being run on laptops capable of running them locally I think in the future much lower spec hardware will be used. So I guess tablets that allow a keyboard and mouse addition will potentially have a part to play. I'd still wonder how the iPad would fit in, I was looking at Pages and Numbers on my iPad and they only support editing by mailing the file to and from yourself.

[neilm]

Mod74, on 30 July 2010 - 09:25 AM, said:

...I'd still wonder how the iPad would fit in, I was looking at Pages and Numbers on my iPad and they only support editing by mailing the file to and from yourself.

That's one of my biggest gripes with the iPad/ iOS. Unless you have a desktop MAC there is absolutely no way to sync documents with a Windows based PC; the iWorks programs can import MS Office files but can't re-export them after they have been locally converted other than as PDF images or iWorks files.

Goodreader, Quickoffice Connect, Dropbox and Documents to Go can all handle some aspects, but the 'sandbox' architecture means you end up having a number of copies of the same file unique to each program, and out of sync with each other.

I fell foul of this in the past 2 weeks when I needed to do a presentation tutorial to a group of students. I created a 'Keynote' presentation and ran it using the VGA output. Very successful too, until my head of department asked for a copy of the presentation as a Powerpoint file. At present this is simply not possible- you can export the .key file to iWorks but can't convert it. The next one I did, I created in Powerpoint on the PC and downloaded to Keynote, but after running the tutorial, some changes had been made to some slides, so once again there was a sync issue with the original file.

I couldn't use QuickOffice as that doesn't support the VGA output!

[iMe]

neilm, on 30 July 2010 - 09:49 AM, said:

That's one of my biggest gripes with the iPad/ iOS. Unless you have a desktop MAC there is absolutely no way to sync documents with a Windows based PC; the iWorks programs can import MS Office files but can't re-export them after they have been locally converted other than as PDF images or iWorks files.

Goodreader, Quickoffice Connect, Dropbox and Documents to Go can all handle some aspects, but the 'sandbox' architecture means you end up having a number of copies of the same file unique to each program, and out of sync with each other.

I fell foul of this in the past 2 weeks when I needed to do a presentation tutorial to a group of students. I created a 'Keynote' presentation and ran it using the VGA output. Very successful too, until my head of department asked for a copy of the presentation as a Powerpoint file. At present this is simply not possible- you can export the .key file to iWorks but can't convert it. The next one I did, I created in Powerpoint on the PC and downloaded to Keynote, but after running the tutorial, some changes had been made to some slides, so once again there was a sync issue with the original file.

I couldn't use QuickOffice as that doesn't support the VGA output!

I suppose it is hardly surprising that Apple want you to buy a Mac too, after all how well does Activesync work on a Mac ......

With a Mac though, the iWorks apps on the iPad are awesome tools on the go, there is always going to be a trade off somewhere but hopefully the move towards the cloud, particular using web standards, should see the playing field levelled.

Thin clients actually don't offer a huge cost benefit to a decent sized enterprise (if you have over 500 PC's you would surely be looking at leasing hardware in any case), you still have to pay hardware maintenance and desk side support whereas moving to a user owned model would leave the onus for this with the user. We would obviously have to build safeguards to ensure that users didn't fly by the seat of their pants and risk being left with nothing to work on admittedly. There is also the cost of setting up the server side components, additional security implications, bandwidth requirements both at the users location and the datacentre, but along with a move towards more homeworkers this option seems to make more and more sense. As yet we are still a few years away from being able to efficiently run proper high end apps (high end CAD for example) from a thin client/VM architecture too.

I do like to draw a line between tablets and slates as a tablet to me is a laptop with a touch screen and they have been around for years without making an impact, probably because Windows isn't designed for touch screen

[bydandie]

neilm, on 30 July 2010 - 09:49 AM, said:

That's one of my biggest gripes with the iPad/ iOS. Unless you have a desktop MAC there is absolutely no way to sync documents with a Windows based PC; the iWorks programs can import MS Office files but can't re-export them after they have been locally converted other than as PDF images or iWorks files.

Goodreader, Quickoffice Connect, Dropbox and Documents to Go can all handle some aspects, but the 'sandbox' architecture means you end up having a number of copies of the same file unique to each program, and out of sync with each other.

I fell foul of this in the past 2 weeks when I needed to do a presentation tutorial to a group of students. I created a 'Keynote' presentation and ran it using the VGA output. Very successful too, until my head of department asked for a copy of the presentation as a Powerpoint file. At present this is simply not possible- you can export the .key file to iWorks but can't convert it. The next one I did, I created in Powerpoint on the PC and downloaded to Keynote, but after running the tutorial, some changes had been made to some slides, so once again there was a sync issue with the original file.

I couldn't use QuickOffice as that doesn't support the VGA output!

I'm going to be astounded if Apple don't resolve this and the lack of printing support by the next release as it is the chronic shortcoming with apps that are not exactly cheap. I also expect pages to allow revision of documents on the fly. If they don't do either then they are seriously missing a trick.

In terms of iWork, you can post a iWork file and state how someone can consume it, in terms of iworks or ms office formats.