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Craig Mathias

In Search of the Business Tablet

I had the privilege of filling in for Maribel Lopez (my Co-Chair at next month's inaugural Mobile Connect conference in Boston, on the Tablets Panel at last week's Interop conference in Las Vegas. I was very pleased that my old friend and colleague Tom Henderson was also able to be on this panel, along with Professor Terri Griffith of Santa Clara University, and as panel Chair the always informative and entertaining Michael Dortch. Needless to say, this session was a lot of fun, covering the both the technical and business aspects of tablets in the enterprise.

While the discussion was wide-ranging, Tom and I were both all over the lack of a "business" tablet in the market. Granted, the consumerization of IT (CoIT) is now in full swing, and there's nothing fundamental that a consumer-grade tablet can't do in the enterprise. I think, though, that it boils down to a question of emphasis on the part of the tablet manufacturers.

Just for fun, take a look at what Apple thinks an iPad in business needs. Go ahead, I'll wait. Or just let me summarize what you'll find at the previous link: there's an app for that. SharePlus. Goodreader. Dropbox. The iWork suite. QuickOffice. Etc. In other words, you're on your own. I use FileBrowser to access the office network here; it's quite primitive compared to what comes standard in a real OS today. At least it's cheap. But it should be free, as in, included as basic functional in iOS. And will Microsoft port a version of Office to the iPad? They would if they were smart, but they're not. Unless, of course, Windows 8 turns out to be the guts of a business tablet. So maybe they are.
Continued

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