Tablet computers have stealthily taken over many enterprises, bringing convenience and speed of decision-making to knowledge workers - and giant headaches to the IT department. How can enterprises control the tablet computer explosion? How should they be approaching application development on the tablet? How can they ensure that tablets deliver convenience everywhere without compromising security?
And is it just a question of buying an iPad, or are there some compelling alternative tablets? Tablets started sneaking into organisations in late 2009, recalls Robyn Milham, head of enterprise sales at RIM SA.
"Back then it was most often the CEO who bought one on his travels, came back and asked IT to set it up. It was an executive toy at first, similar to the first smartphones."
Paulo Ferreira, head of mobile product and software at Samsung Electronics SA, says the first tablets from Samsung were very consumer-focused.
"But we quickly noticed that the enterprise customer knocked on our door and asked about the device. That's when we realised the tipping point had been reached."
Mark Walker, director of insights and vertical industries at IDC, says what's interesting is how far down the organisation the tablet will move.
"Where we've seen adoption is at the executive suite level but what's interesting is how far it will move down. There's a psychological element: executives receive a lot of information and dispatch decisions so it's a consumption device rather than an input device. That affects who adopts tablets and how their role will change."
Adam Craker, CEO of IQ Business, argues that tablets are not in the enterprise just yet but have 'come into
people's lives'.
"They're a convergent technology that brings many different features into one format and one place," he says. "The enterprise is struggling to use that technology and it hasn't become mainstream yet. It's been brought in by individuals who can afford them.
“At the local launch of the iPad, I asked the CEO of the local distributor what the enterprise push would be. He said the iPad was more of an extension to the iPod and the iPhone and he thought there wouldn't be a business application."
Manoli Rodokanakis, MD of Developer Connections Borland, also hasn't seen a big enterprise application push just yet but certainly lot of consumer popularity.
"That will force corporations to ask how they will access their markets through tablets."
Matthew Cook, head of centre of excellence for application development at BCX, says that from a software development perspective, enterprises are coming to BCX and asking it to solve problems using the technology.
"There's a useful term we've come up with: gold collar worker. This is a high net worth individual who is enjoying interacting with his broker through this device. But it's a small percentage of the market. Tablets are not robust: if you drop them, they break and are expensive to replace. They're used for data consumption but the enterprise is nervous about the security of that information."
Tony de Sousa, executive for product sales and marketing, describes how Gijima introduced tablets across the board.
"The first person to introduce the device was our CEO. When he came back from an overseas trip, he said he would like to see the management team using them. So every time there's a board or an exco meeting, everyone has a device and no one is taking notes.
“We are doing some other experiments internally. I think they will replace the PC - it's just a matter of time. We're encouraging people to use the device rather than their laptops.”
Corporate asset
But simply replacing the laptop - or the desktop - with a tablet is not as easy as it sounds even if, as seems likely, people will be bringing their own devices to the workplace.
Milham says the CIOs she speaks to are asking how to manage multiple devices including smartphones and tablets from a single platform in a way that's easy and transparent to the user. Julie Tomlinson, practice manager at Sybase SA, says tablets need to be provisioned as would be any tethered device.
"They need to be secured, managed, and in every other way viewed as if they were a normal corporate asset. The sheer amount of data these devices contain, and the likelihood of their containing tons of corporate data, means they must be dealt with as if they were normal terminals or PCs.
“There has to be a way to bring the management of all devices, including tablets, under centralised management, or we could see a few disasters occur, as have occurred with people losing cellphones, smartphones, PCs and hard drives."
BCX's Cook says that his organisation has tried a few times in the past to allow clients to dictate the type of device that is used for an application.
"But the smartphone is a personal device and the tablet is a personal device. So organisations are starting to accept that people will bring their own devices to work and they're figuring out how to manage that."
Samsung's Ferreira says it's early days and the ecosystem will evolve naturally.
"There are certain verticals that are particularly well-suited to tablets. Financial services is one, retail and manufacturing are others. But as the number of applications for tablets increases and more business applications become available, the ecosystems will start driving themselves. They're starting to become self-sustainable."
Developing those business applications brings its own set of challenges. For Simon Griffiths, product and industry marketing consultant at Syspro, the HTML 5 standard has been helpful.
"For us, HTML 5 is a saviour. We can't afford to develop native applications for each platform. It's just not feasible for a large ERP application. So HTML 5 is part of the solution. The other part is having a devent pipe and making the communications secure. We have some tools that allow us to write one application that changes as the device form factor changes. We're developing a mobile interface to our ERP applications and once that's available, sales will be able to use the same application they're using on their PCs but on a mobile device."
Gijima's De Sousa points out that the problem is deeper than simply choosing a front-end delivery mechanism.
"What you're doing by introducing tablets into organisations is disrupting the status quo. So the first thing that happens is that business processes, workflows and systems that support them need to change. And the legacy is the prohibitor of mobility in the enterprise. That is why emerging companies are far more nimble at adopting mobile strategies.
“As an enterprise, you need to look at application development technologies that are UI-agnostic: you should be able to build once and deploy to any device. Now you can have 30 fields on an Internet browser but you can't have 30 fields on a mobile device. The second thing is that everyone is looking at app stores but the challenge is how to integrate those applications with your existing systems."
Chris Lazarus, managing executive of the commercial development enterprise segment at Vodacom, says HTML 5 will make a lot of things easier although it won't solve the whole problem.
"These mobility problems existed before tablets came about. The CIOs have not adjusted security policies, they haven't tagged the devices as assets. Almost all of the large enterprises in this country haven't recognised the smartphone as an IT asset. The problems that exist are just becoming more topical. Why is this any different from the thousands of laptops that are already out there? It should be managed in the same way."
Is there really anything new about managing tablets that CIOs need to know? Ferreira says no.
"We're starting to see the CIO adopt policies. As an OEM, we break up our market by consumer, enterprise and the new one, which is the pro-sumer. That last category is the fastest growing, by the way, and as their influence amplifies across organisations, we'll start finding the average user will come in with a device they've bought over the weekend and start putting pressure on the IT department. That's already started.
“So if CIOs aren't looking at policies already, they're going to have a problem. It's the PC revisited. The same principles apply."
New-style app store
That influx of users will bring in their own unique set of installed applications. How should businesses be going about developing their own? RIM's Milham says it depend on the size of the organisation as to whether you choose off-the-shelf or bespoke development.
"Larger organisations tend to choose bespoke. They will look at how mobility can address certain business process pains because there can be a place for that. But if you're an SME, there are a number of apps in an app store that can help you directly. What is also happening is that we're having meetings not just with the CIO but with the marketing team as well."
BCX's Cook says the bespoke is fading fast.
"I hope I'm wrong but I see a smaller window for the bespoke applications because the big ERP providers are coming out with their own applications. Instead of having me as a development company producing a specific app for customers, they will use an app that they download from a vendor and then ask me to do some integration. That's only for the enterprise, though: the SMEs are where we still have an opportunity."
Tablets have come not into the enterprise, but into people's lives.
Adam Craker, IQ Business Group
Gijima's De Sousa believes the traditional package vendors are about to have their world to turned upside down.
"With the advent of mobile technology, the number of people who can build and deliver mobile apps is going to be greater than ever before. But the new app stores will be of business processes, not applications. You can do late binding of business processes and you will be able to compile your own ERP."
Are we about to enter a golden age of application development thanks to the tablet? Watch this space.
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