CIOIN

I think the choice of whether or not to ready your enterprise for the tablet depends on the type of business that you are in. We are a manufacturing company and data security is a major concern for us. Forget tablets, even laptops are an issue for management. We prefer employees working on desktops as long as their jobs don’t require them to be mobile.

And as for the mobility argument—in terms of accessing e-mails etcetera—I think smartphones are sufficient, though working on spreadsheets is not easy. Also, using tablets for engineering design and heavy computing isn’t feasible as these devices may not have the processing power to support it.

Also, tablets are more expensive than desktops and today they are being sold—comparatively—at laptop prices, hence it becomes really difficult to justify the investment. We are also reluctant to invest in tablets till our existing end-user devices become obsolete.
I also feel that tablets make sense to advertising companies that depend on presentations and collaboration but not for a hardcore manufacturing company like ours.

Currently, tablets are appealing to students and users who are into gaming and multimedia applications. But in order to use them in the organization, these devices need to be Windows-compatible and not all devices are configured for such integration.
The American economy works on the fundamentals of replacement, meaning as soon as something new comes up, they dump the old and buy the newer version. But we haven’t reached that stage yet, except for low-end mobiles. We need to have the ability to upgrade and squeeze the most out of our investments before we think of replacing the old.

And the speed at which technology is evolving also plays on the mind of the buyer because he knows that as soon as he buys a tablet, better versions are bound to follow. That’s why, I feel, it isn’t an intelligent investment.