Putting tablets to work

IT directors are faced with requests from employees to use an ever-increasing range of devices on company systems. But few IT departments are set up to support all the technologies on the market. So how do you decide which mobile devices you support? And how do you ensure your strategy is flexible enough to accommodate new developments in this increasingly crowded marketplace? Our web seminar took a hardware-agnostic look at the hot topic of tablets.

Our experts were: Chris Knowles, head of solutions, Dimension Data; Ian Thain, senior technical evangelist, Sybase; and David Shaw, marketing product manager, Fujitsu Stylistic Q550

The IT market has seen laptops, smartphones and netbooks. Are tablet computers just a fad?

Chris Knowles: Tablets aren’t new, but it’s only in the past 18 months we’ve seen a massive explosion in their use, both in the consumer and work environment. Once people start to get comfortable with the way they’re used, it becomes easier to use them in business.

They’re here to stay. You’ll still need desktops for people who are primarily desk based and have particular application needs. There’ll still be people who need the power and the facilities of a traditional laptop. But there is a section in between, where a tablet comes into its own. It can present content more clearly than a smartphone but is also smaller and easier to use than a notebook.

Ian Thain: We’ve only had a tablet market for about 12 months, and it has been rapidly absorbed into our way of life. You get on a train and you don’t look twice at somebody with a tablet. Businesses will reap the benefit of that. You can present data to your customers more graphically and in different ways.

David Shaw: The term “tablet PC” is a buzzword so businesses need to be careful that they don’t get sucked in. They need to review and understand who in the workforce can benefit from a tablet.

A tablet is a product that fits into business along with desktops and laptops. But a tablet is not a blanket solution. The mobile workers who could benefit most from a tablet PC are those who find the bulk and power of a norebook a little too much and a bit overkill.

Most companies use Microsoft software, but the tablet market is dominated by Apple iOS and Android devices. Could this present problems?

David Shaw: The new Fujitsu Stylistic Q550 is a Windows 7 device and is available now. It makes use of the touch input in Windows, and you can also use a stylus pen and on-screen keyboard. We are confident that this product does fit the business need.

We are now seeing more consumer-oriented devices appearing in the workplace, but these are not specifically designed for business, so security is a key issue. Connectivity and compatibility with existing software and integrating into an existing estate of Windows-based devices is another issue.

This is not to say they are bad devices. But if you’ve got something designed for consumer markets trying to be shoehorned into business, there will inevitably be some issues.

Chris Knowles: Many clients we’re working with are looking at technologies like desktop virtualisation to answer this challenge. Virtual desktop infrastructure takes power away from the end device and puts it into a consolidated virtualised server environment, so that applications no longer run locally on the device but run within that server environment. This enables different operating systems to access those same applications.