Market Insights on the Pending Business Tablet Invasion

Here's the scenario, you're a busy executive working away from your office and you just want to quickly research something on the Web. You turn on the company-provided notebook computer and you wait the standard 3-6 minute delay, before you can actually use it.

The corporate IT department has numerous mandatory processes that must load first -- such as virus protection, data backup, system and app software updates, etc. -- on a typical Windows system. That's often dozens of processes running at start-up, and some will consume 100 percent of the available processing power.

That automated cycle can temporarily incapacitate a notebook PC. Don't bother attempting to load a web browser while this PC start-up sequence is in motion. What's the alternative? If you have a media tablet, simply use it instead and you're on the Web in a matter of seconds.

Mobile Workers and Their Virtual Workspace

Is your company prepared for the pending business tablet invasion that will likely raise the bar of expectations for corporate mobile computing? Ready or not, this trend is already in motion. Cisco announced findings from a global survey of IT managers' perceptions about tablet form-factor mobile devices in the enterprise.

Cisco commissioned Redshift Research to perform a market study to assess attitudes, fears and hopes for media tablets in the workplace from a survey of more than 1500 IT managers and executives in the U.S., Canada, UK, France, Germany and Spain. While it's still considered a nascent market, this year we'll surely see an increase in the adoption of business-oriented tablet computing.

Key findings from the market study include:

Media Tablet Demand

• Tablets vs. smartphones: which win? Globally, IT departments report employees place one tablet request for every three smartphone requests today.
• Which countries lead? Of the countries surveyed, the US and France are tied for tops -- each report a tablet is requested by 21% of the workforce. Senior executives are most likely to be issued a tablet in the US (38%) and least likely to be issued one in the UK (27 percent).
• Who's most excited? Spain tops the list, with 90% of IT managers believing the tablet will become more popular in the next two years.
• "Uber-connected sales guys". Tablets are significantly more prevalent among salespeople in Germany (31%) than in all other countries (21% on average).

IT Manager Fears And Wants

• Tops in security concerns? The U.S., the country with the most experience managing tablets, also ranks #1 on the "security issue": 75% of US IT managers said new rules must be established around security and device usage.
• What about app access? Nearly half (48%) of all IT managers surveyed agree that access to company applications should be restricted for all employees. Canada and UK were the top countries in wanting to see restricted access on tablet form-factor devices (55% and 56 %, respectively).
• Custom apps? IT managers universally agree that custom tablet applications would benefit their business.
• Top "want list" features? Globally, three-quarters of IT managers indicated email and document sharing are "must haves". About half agreed or strongly agreed that these are desirable: video conferencing, IM, access to company databases and seamless synchronization with other business devices.

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)

• Turning a blind eye to BYOD. Globally, 48% said their company would never authorize employees to bring their own devices to work, yet 57% agreed that some employees use personal devices without consent.
• 51% of the respondents reported the number of employees bringing their own devices to work is on the rise.
• Using personal devices without consent was highest in the US (64%) and lowest in Germany (49%).
• Access to company servers was highlighted as a "huge problem" of the "bring your own device" to work phenomena as was lost/stolen devices (64% globally).
• Globally, 44% say that handling BYOD issues diverts IT attention from other important projects.

"Mobile workers and virtual workspaces are here to stay -- but so are the demands on IT to continue to ensure enterprise-grade security, manageability and interoperability. 2012 promises to be an exciting year and IT leaders are a critical component in unleashing innovation and enabling organizations to take advantage of the next wave of business growth and opportunity. Cisco is keenly focused on helping its customers navigate the post-PC era and transform their business," said Tom Puorro, director of product management, IPCBU, Cisco Systems.

Survey respondents were from a wide variety of global companies and are either primary IT decision makers or play a key role in the procurement process. Sole proprietors were excluded from the study. Field work was conducted in late 2011.

Cisco CloudVerse: a Comprehensive Cloud Framework

Multinational company CEOs are one of the most vocal advocates of the managed cloud services phenomenon. Many have been through the painful process of watching helplessly as their CIO championed the deployment of monolithic ERP and CRM systems -- only to discover that these huge enterprise software projects failed to live up to their promise.

Meanwhile, purposeful line-of-business executives have successfully utilized software-as-a-service (SaaS), with their CEO's support, to break free from the legacy IT platforms and thereby give their employees the business technology (BT) productivity tools that they had hoped for -- or that the power-users demanded.

Forward-looking vendors and prescient BT service providers are now leading the transition to the next wave of productivity-enhancing and cost-reducing platforms. Next year, we'll likely witness increased market activity, as the next chapter of this story unfolds.

In anticipation, Cisco has pro-actively presented its cloud strategic plan and tactical roadmap to both eager channel partners and savvy enterprise customers.

Cisco CloudVerse is a framework that combines the foundational elements needed to enable organizations to build, manage and connect public, private and hybrid clouds.

Cisco CloudVerse combines these key cloud elements -- Unified Data Center, Cloud Intelligent Network, and Cloud Applications and Services -- enabling businesses to realize all of the benefits of clouds: improved agility, better economics, enhanced security and a dynamic, assured experience.

The Cisco Cloud Index, issued last week, forecasts how dramatically clouds are transforming business IT and consumer services. The study predicts that over 50 percent of computing workloads in data centers will be cloud-based by 2014, and that global cloud traffic will grow over 12 times by 2015, to 1.6 zettabytes per year -- the equivalent of over four days of business-class video for every person on earth.

The insightful study suggests that the explosive growth in clouds requires advanced capabilities that allow the data center and network to work together -- to support end-to-end cloud application delivery.

The All-Inclusive Approach to Cloud Enablement

Today, most cloud technologies exist in silos, preventing an efficient, integrated management approach. By integrating the three foundational cloud elements -- the Cisco Unified Data Center with the Cisco Intelligent Network to enable Cloud Applications and Services -- CloudVerse delivers a business-class cloud experience within the cloud, between clouds, and beyond the cloud to the end user.

A large number of enterprises, service providers, and governments have announced that they are adopting Cisco CloudVerse as the foundation of their cloud strategies, including ACS, a Xerox Company; Fujitsu; NWN; LinkedIn; Orange Business Services; Qualcomm; Silicon Valley Bank; Telecom Italia; Telefónica S.A.; Telstra; and Terremark, a Verizon Company. Today over 70 percent of leading cloud providers are using Cisco CloudVerse on their journey to the cloud.

"We're moving to a world where our business customers want to experience services anywhere, anytime on any device. Cisco CloudVerse is architected to help deliver on the promise of cloud by unifying compute, storage and network resources that can be securely and rapidly re-purposed and managed on-demand to meet the needs of different customers or applications. These capabilities are fundamental to the cloud and the Cisco Cloud Intelligent Network is purpose-built to help deliver the security, scalability and flexibility we need," said Kerry Bailey, Terremark, a Verizon Company.

The Three Core Elements of CloudVerse:

Unified Data Center changes the economics of cloud infrastructure by providing a fabric-based platform automating the "as-a-service" model across physical and virtual environments, and designed to scale with business demands by flexibly allocating resources within and between data centers using unified computing and unified fabric. Cisco is also adding new Unified Management capabilities:

Cisco Intelligent Automation for the Cloud is designed to provide automated provisioning and management of data center resources for the delivery of cloud services within and between data centers.

Cisco Network Services Manager is designed to automatically create, deploy and modify physical and virtual networking resources on demand.

Cloud Intelligent Network provides a consistent and highly secure user experience wherever the user is located and across the multiple clouds involved in delivering an application or service. Cisco now adds new "Cloud-to-Cloud Connect" capabilities:

"Cloud-to-Cloud Connect," featuring the Cisco Network Positioning System on the ASR 1000 and 9000 Series Aggregation Services Routersin 2012, will enable dynamic resource identification, allocation and optimization between data centers and clouds.

Cloud Applications and Services enable "as a service" delivery of both Cisco and third-party cloud applications. Several new capabilities are being added to Cisco's Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS):

Private Cloud HCS empowers enterprises to build their own collaboration cloud using Cisco's validated and tested solution and full management capabilities.

Mobile HCS provides mobile service providers with an easy and cost-effective way to offer collaboration from the cloud, thus extending services from "fixed" devices to mobile phones. For example, providers can virtually connect thousands of mobile users at a company with single-number reach, or enable customers to transition a call from a desk phone to a mobile phone while the call is in progress.

Customer Collaboration makes contact center capabilities more affordable and accessible by adding Cisco Customer Collaboration offerings to HCS. These offerings are available on a limited basis now and targeted for general availability in 2012.

Cisco is supporting CloudVerse with new cloud enablement services, whichcombine Cisco's professional and technical services expertise with those of a broad ecosystem of partners, allowing organizations to accelerate their cloud success and realize the full potential of cloud.

Demand for More Open, Flexible Workplace Environment

According to a new market study by Cisco, a majority (60%) of IT decision makers from North European countries believe the ability to work remotely leads to increased productivity -- and it is no longer necessary to be confined to an office to be productive.

Although these IT decision makers believe technology (such as business tablets) allows them to be more mobile and flexible, more than half (56%) of those surveyed -- led by those in Norway and The Netherlands -- work one or more extra hours per day as a result of the ability to work remotely.

In Northern Europe, there is a growing need for remote access to the company network, social media access in the workplace and for the freedom to use personal devices for business purposes -- also known as "Bring Your Own Device" or BYOD.

This trend can have a significant impact on the IT policies of organizations and among end users who are employed by companies with IT policies -- as the study also found that nearly half (47%) indicate their IT policy could use improvement or updating.

That's the primary conclusions from an online survey held by Cisco in five countries: Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and The Netherlands. The results of this North European survey complement and confirm the findings of last year's Cisco Connected World Technology Report -- an international research into the demands, behaviour and work lifestyles of the next generation of workers.

In addition, the survey found that when faced with the choice between "a higher salary and no remote access" versus a "lower salary position that offers remote access," end users are split, with one out of every two respondents (53%) opting for a lower salary, because they find work flexibility more important.

With little differentiation across the countries, more than 6 out of 10 (65%) end users expect to have remote access to the network in the future.

Demand for Mobile Enterprise Connectivity

Looking at the use of mobile devices, end users from Northern European countries tend to use more than one device during the typical workday: more than 8 in 10 (82%) end users indicate they use at least one device at work that is not company-issued.

More than half (51%) of the surveyed IT decision makers even indicate that up to 50% of their company's mobile workers use a smartphone as their primary communication device.

Overall, most businesses in the surveyed countries have at least taken some steps to prepare for a "mobile and distributed" workforce. Still, 1 in 5 IT decision makers (21%) indicate that their company is as yet completely unprepared. The highest percentage of unprepared businesses is reported in Norway (26%).

In The Netherlands, 14% of decision makers indicate that their company is totally unprepared. In each country, roughly one-third (36%) indicate they are actively working towards enabling a mobile, distributed workforce, especially in the Netherlands (45%).

Surprisingly, although Norway reports the largest percentage of completely unprepared companies, it also has the highest proportion of companies that already have state-of-the-art IT support for a "mobile and distributed" workforce (34%), together with Denmark (31%). In that respect, Netherlands (14%) and Belgium (12%) trail the pack.

Access to Social Media Networking Resources

Few end users (less than 1 in 5, 19%) report that access to social media type websites and applications is restricted at the workplace. Likewise, about 6 in 10 IT decision makers (59%) -- particularly those in Denmark -- feel that access to social media sites and applications are important for the work-life balance, or staying competitive with other businesses that use them.

"Our Workforce Survey in Northern Europe confirms that employees really want an open and flexible workplace environment. The survey indicates that IT decision makers want to accommodate this requirement and in a secure way enable a mobile, distributed workforce. Most end users in the surveyed countries indicate that they work an extra hour or more per day because of their ability to work remotely. This shows BYOD brings the productivity we are looking for," said Niels Furu, Vice President, Cisco Northern Europe.

Tablet Use in Business to Gain Momentum in 2012

The early-adopter trials have begun, the commercial apps are being developed -- it's now a given, purpose-built tablets will be used in more mainstream business settings during 2012. Besides, executives and IT managers at multinational companies will likely witness this phenomenon first, particularly in the more advanced markets.

According to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC), media tablet shipments in EMEA reached more than 12 million units in the first three quarters of 2011 -- growing to 20 million units by the end of the year.

Although business purchases currently represent less than 10 percent of the entire tablet market, the near-term opportunity for growth from business use is believed to be significant -- including online collaboration applications.

Functionality such as a touch screen user-interface, portability, secure LAN connectivity and more business apps for vertical industry needs, are all factors that demonstrate the potential value in commercial settings.

Introducing Media Tablets into the Enterprise

IDC recently conducted a study across businesses in Western Europe to understand the perceptions of tablet adoption, intention to purchase, applications for specific business needs, preference for features, and acquisition strategies.

The key takeaways from the IDC study include:

Adoption Trend: More than 48 percent of businesses have either already evaluated and are keen to introduce tablets or purchased a few, and many verticals pointed to interest in purchasing tablets by the first and second half of 2012. With evident uptake among the IT services, professional services industry, other sectors such as transport and storage, utilities and distribution are showing strong interest.

Perception of Adoption: More than 22 percent of businesses think that the present generation of tablets defined by Apple iPad, are more suitable to their needs -- for example, meter reading, inventory management -- rather than their present equipment, such as traditional tablet devices or vertical application devices.

App Usage in Business: Applications and usage of tablets in businesses vary depending on the industry. Mainstream business use for tablets are as presentation tools during customer meetings and to remotely check emails and calendars. But tablets are suited for several key vertical applications such as:

• Equipment maintenance, meter-reading (water, gas, electricity), proof-of-service in the field service category.
• Asset and inventory management, telematics and direct store delivery in the storage and logistics, travel, and distribution verticals.

Tablet User Preference: While iOS and Android receive a strong response rate, more than 30 percent of respondents would consider a Windows OS-based tablet. While some businesses are price-sensitive, others would pay up to 50 percent above the standard price to have the most suitable tablet. Features vary depending on the business use-case; whether for the choice of screen size, or ruggedized features:

• Transport and storage and distribution sectors prefer to have barcode scanners, SD card readers, and cameras.
• Finance sectors prefer features such as credit card readers, signature capture, and HDD with encryption.

Deployment and Acquisition Strategy: Most businesses favor partnering directly with OEMs and traditional resellers with few verticals interested in partnering with ISVs. Virtualization and cloud-based solutions are the top preferred technologies considered to support tablet devices.

IDC believes that tablets now are a credible client device option, and in some cases they better fulfill the needs which are only partially met by traditional devices. They say that while some companies are in a wait-and-see mode, the forward-thinking leaders and early-adopters are already keen to deploy solutions.

Growing Demand for Mobile Enterprise Application Services

More capable smartphones and media tablets are now joining a variety of highly portable netbook computers that have already invaded the workplace. Many are being combined with mobile apps that tap into cloud-based productivity solutions.

According to the latest market study by ABI Research, healthcare is one of the most dynamic sectors for mobile technologies, and manufacturing is now the largest sector for mobile enterprise applications worldwide.

By 2016, manufacturing will generate approximately 23 percent of the nearly $5 billion in mobile enterprise application service revenues.

Mobile enterprise applications, also called mobile B2E applications, include dashboard apps, work flow approval apps, and line-of-business applications for both the smartphone and tablet.

ABI's mobile services practice director, Dan Shey, says, "Manufacturing beats healthcare for B2E app adoption and revenues because of its large employment worldwide and the breadth of occupations that can benefit from mobile apps."

China is also one of the biggest drivers for manufacturing B2E mobile app adoption.

Manufacturing is the second largest employer worldwide. Manufacturing also employs a wide range of occupations using B2E apps, including shipping or receiving workers, delivery drivers, management and supervisory personnel, sales, and installation and repair workers.

Moreover, China is the world’s manufacturing hub, which drives B2E app needs -- not only for Chinese manufacturers but also for companies visiting their Chinese subcontractors.

Healthcare is the top sector in B2E mobile app adoption when viewing the data at the regional level. Healthcare leads in Western Europe, the Middle East, and especially North America, where healthcare B2E adoption outpaces manufacturing by nearly five to one.

Mobile Enterprise App Development Life-Cycle Services

Media tablet and smartphone software applications (apps) have entered the mainstream of business technology. In fact, results from recent market research by International Data Corporation (IDC) demonstrates that service providers are already reporting increasing enterprise and independent software vendor (ISV) activity -- centered upon the new commercial mobile apps ecosystem that has emerged.

These latest developments are establishing mobile initiatives for a variety of horizontal and industry-specific business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) application scenarios.

Enabling Mobile Enterprise Agile App Development

Furthermore, third parties are increasing their mobile application life-cycle investments to meet the growing demand for mobile applications -- such as native, Web-based or cross-platform -- with an emphasis on accelerating client mobile applications to market at lower total cost of ownership (TCO) with higher productivity and quality.

An insightful IDC study has analyzed the emerging new mobility services market and reviewed vendor investments in infrastructure and mobile intellectual property (IP) -- across fourteen different providers.

The following are key factors influencing growth in this segment:

• Accelerating mobile IP creation or investment and partnership activity through component reusability, application factories, and use of internal IP for rapid cross-platform portability are central to service provider investments.
• Partnerships with mobile enterprise application platform vendors are on the rise as are initiatives that integrate smart device technology with cloud-based back-end applications to improve efficiency, reduce cost, and generate new revenue streams.
• The importance of usability and user experience (UX) is becoming a critical best practice to accelerate development timeframes and ensure alignment to business expectations.
• Mobile development is frequently being packaged as part of broader mobile application life-cycle services -- with heightened attention to mobile platform selection, business case development, architectural planning (e.g. back end integration), and agile mobile development and testing.

"As third-party service providers move forward, they will need to address the broader spectrum of enterprise customer needs, from new entrants to the mobile space to more mature customers that have been engaged in a mobile road map strategy for a few years," said Rona Shuchat, director, Application Outsourcing Services at IDC.

The focus will be on building relevant and innovative business-centric solutions -- using mobile device apps as a key enabler.

As such, it's important to conceptualize new use-cases that will increase operational efficiencies and facilitate higher worker productivity, lower the cost of end-to-end order and supply chains, or introduce effective new ways of marketing products to end-customers via mobility.

How Mobile Applications will Transform all Businesses

Mobile communication related activity is now considered the number one business technology issue on the minds of IT professionals in the Asia-Pacific region, according to the latest market study by IDC. Their analysts have been exploring, in depth, what mobility really means for organizations and how utilizing a variety of commercial mobile applications will become the norm in the near future.

Clearly, enterprise mobility has been a familiar topic for savvy business and technology leaders within most multinational organizations. For many companies it means mobile email, perhaps some form of unified communications (UC) or fixed mobile convergence (FMC).

Moreover, for the more adventurous IT leaders, they have already embarked on extending workplace applications into the mobile environment.

How Mobility Supports Operational Business Goals

Tim Dillon, IDC's Associate Vice President for Asia-Pacific says, "That's yesterday's view. It's changed. Organizations that continue to take enterprise mobility for granted will be swept aside in the new environment. Today, we’re seeing what we could call a perfect storm, created by the evolution of different areas of technology combining to fundamentally, and drastically change how organizations can use enterprise mobility to support business goals and strategies."

IDC research clients are seeing new access networks, new devices, new mobile operating systems, business related applications (apps), platforms and delivery models come together to create an all-embracing enterprise mobility.

Previous IT turning points were the move from mainframes to desktops, and the growth of Internet access. Now, new mobile devices and numerous productivity-oriented applications will constitute the next wave of business technology adoption.

Amongst the many issues that IDC will continue to explore, perhaps the changing landscape for devices is most prevalent -- where media tablets, such as the Apple iPad, and large-screen smartphones can now run almost fully functional versions of all enterprise software and services.

Smarter and more capable mobile operating systems, along with the applied talent of independent software developers, are providing the market with the ingredients for an agile ecosystem that can quickly mobilize these new applications -- extending the functionality of virtually all IT systems to mainstream mobile devices.

Mobility Combined with Cloud Computing Services

Dillon adds, "ICT is evolving on multiple fronts to create a true revolution in mobility. As enterprise applications become mobile, the boundaries of the enterprise become extended and blurred. With the constant evolution in devices and applications that tap into the core enterprise systems, all systems become increasingly vulnerable to the acts of negligent users and malicious attacks -- companies will need to pair pervasive mobility with ubiquitous security."

Furthermore, as more and more communication and collaboration applications transition to the cloud -- via either managed public or private cloud computing services -- demand for mobile access is likely to increase, in line with the continued user adoption of multifaceted smartphones and purpose-built business-centric tablets.