James Governor's Monkchips

iPad in the Enterprise: and so it begins

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In truth it began a while ago – SAP was the first truly deeply enterprisey company to go gaga for the iPad. First rule of SAP demos – use an iPad. Second rule of SAP demos- well you get the idea. Hell with iPads… you don’t even need Ian Kimbell.

Line of business folks (or as we like to call them today, “consumers”) aren’t asking for tablets, they’re asking for iPads. There is no room for commodity in this market yet (nice piece of glass notwithstanding). Its not lot like going to IT and saying we need a portal. Its more like I bought this awesome thing, and I need my business reports on it already.

Apple doesn’t like the complexity that enterprises like, so an ecosystem is going to emerge to serve the iPad. Which brings me to the trigger for this post. A couple of stories I noticed.

How about the iPad as a front end for Oracle’s virtual desktop infrastructure platform? Look ma no Sun Ray! Thinnest client ever. I am sure @thinguy approves.

Or how about Siemens Teamcenter product lifecycle management running on the iPad, gestures on engineering drawings and so on. According to Techworld Siemens sees field engineers using iPads in industrial environments.

That’s just a couple of random pieces of news this week. For all the talk of HTML5, iPad support is now an enterprise requirement. From an architecture standpoint it makes little sense for enterprises to develop their own iPad apps – but when it comes to consuming them they’re demanding native from vendors.

 

 

 

 

10 comments

  1. […] iPad in the Enterprise: and so it begins – James Governor's Monkchips (tags: ipad enterprise ux) […]

  2. […] support is now an enterprise requirement," writes RedMonk co-founder and analyst James Governor in a post about both the Oracle app and the TechWorld article. "From an architecture standpoint it […]

  3. […] support is now an enterprise requirement," writes RedMonk co-founder and analyst James Governor in a post about both the Oracle app and the TechWorld article. "From an architecture standpoint it […]

  4. […] support is now an enterprise requirement,” writes RedMonk co-founder and analyst James Governor in a post about both the Oracle app and the TechWorld article. “From an architecture […]

  5. At appendTo, we’ve been focused on serving this need for around 9 months now and have had tremendous success. In all the presentations I’ve given though, I haven’t settled on a compelling business reason to introduce an iPad other then the “cool” factor yet.

    I know it sounds non-intuitive given the demand, but there’s really no hard data to support this trend yet, don’t you think? I say that being on the front edge of it.

    My best idea currently, and this is how I sell the iPad in the Enterprise, is that having a tablet at your fingertips is all about context. If you can have the information at your fingertips without a 30 second bootup time, you can provide better answers and do your job better. This isn’t easily quantified, but it does begin to tie back to real value.

    This whole space will be incredibly interesting to watch as it matures in the coming years.

  6. […] support is now an enterprise requirement,” writes RedMonk co-founder and analyst James Governor in a post about both the Oracle app and the TechWorld article. “From an architecture […]

  7. […] apps from outside vendors. Just last week we quoted RedMonk co-founder and analyst James Governor's observation that "From an architecture standpoint it makes little sense for enterprises to develop their own […]

  8. […] outside vendors. Just last week we quoted RedMonk co-founder and analyst James Governor’s observation that “From an architecture standpoint it makes little sense for enterprises to develop their […]

  9. This doesn’t sound like an “overwhelming business requirement” (though it might be in the coming times). Sounds more like “riding the iPad wave”.

  10. At Formotus we’re seeing rapid uptake of iPads for field work such as inspections, deliveries, repairs, etc. The iPads aren’t replacing laptops so much as they are replacing paper forms and clipboards in the field.

    Check us out:

    Paperless mobile business solutions from Formotus>

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