
The iPad is about to steamroll into the Enterprise - mlongo
http://ipadwatcher.com/2010/09/07/the-ipad-is-about-to-steamroll-into-the-enterprise/
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josephcooney
I guess I'll believe it when I see it. "The enterprise" is a fairly amorphous
term, but most enterprises I've worked in either didn't have a wireless
network you could connect to (for security reasons) or made you go through a
process with each device that would make a colo-rectal surgeon blush.
Enterprise IT want to lock down and control things (usually un-necessarily
IMO), and I don't think the iPad exposes enough knobs and dials for them to
feel comfortable with it. The bottom line (once again, based on my experience)
is that enterprise IT departments don't care about the productivity of the
people they 'support' - I wrote this post about it a while back
[http://jcooney.net/post/2010/06/30/The-IT-Department-
doesne2...](http://jcooney.net/post/2010/06/30/The-IT-Department-
doesne28099t-Care-about-your-Productivity.aspx)

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aaronblohowiak
The iPad has support for enterprise wifi networks and works very well with
Exchange. It is about as enterprise-friendly (without being MS) as you can
get.

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GBond
Yes, in fact the native iPad Cisco IPSec VPN has a much quicker sign-on time
than OS X version of the client from Cisco.

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rmc00
It's pretty exciting to see the iPad coming to the enterprise. I've heard that
the company I work for released them to executives a few weeks ago, and it
sounds like we're not alone. What's really exciting though is how the
enterprise desktop space is on the edge of some big changes.

In the past, workers sat in one location and worked in a predictable pattern
for a set amount of time. Workers weren't very comfortable with technology and
needed major support. Moreover, work was pretty task-oriented -- it could be
modeled with workflow very easily.

The environment of today is quite a contrast. The location and work hours of
users are definitely not predictable. Furthermore, assistance and limited
options from the IT department can get in the user's way sometimes. Also,
knowledge workers spend a lot of time doing unstructured work -- analysis,
brainstorming, design -- which is something that is hard to model.

Clearly, the old model for desktop has to change. I don't think we can throw a
few departmental applications with a heap of productivity applications at
people and call it a job well done. The iPad's introduction into the
enterprise is a start that signifies different kinds of devices can be
helpful. Desktop virtualization and the cloud probably have a role to play in
all this too. For sure, I'll be interested to see how it all plays out.

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GiraffeNecktie
I don't know if it's gonna steamroll, but the senior mgmt at my enterprise
workplace are twisting arms in the IT department to get iPads OK'd. The
problem for IT is that we already have the infrastructure to support
Blackberrys, so it would be a pain to also support iOS. Hopefully Rim will
hurry up with their tablets.

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illumin8
It's more of a pain to support Blackberry. You need a dedicated server. With
iOS you just turn on Activesync on your Exchange server, and give your users
the DNS name and let them go to town.

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megablast
If Apple are serious about this, they are going to have to provide some better
management tools for enterprise. Being able to manages devices remotely is
incredibly important, and an easy way to install apps is necessary.

I sure hope Apple are reading this blog, <http://speirs.org/>, where the IT
guy is using iPads throught a school in Scotland.

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spoiledtechie
The Enterprises I work with IE the Government, won't allow Apple in their
product line at all. Why you ask, because they are a closed system. Android on
the other side they will definitely use and have started to.

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zmmmmm
Absolutely - as a business owner I want the complete ability to customize
things and deploy whatever apps on there that do whatever I want, whenever I
want. I don't want nobody telling me what to do. And no, requiring 500
employees or using 90 day ad hoc deployment is not nearly satisfactory. Not to
mention that your average enterprise has a bajillion lines of java code that,
it just so happens (with the exception of UI, obviously), runs nearly without
modification on Android.

One thing I am hoping for (and looking forward to) is a 2nd wave of Android
devices which are dedicated special purpose tools. At some point cheap
hardware that runs Android is going to become so pervasive that it will start
showing up in everything from desk calculators to portable POS applications to
medical devices. The attraction of being able to take the raw source code and
specialize it for whatever task you have at hand while leveraging the huge
Android ecosystem is amazing. This has yet to happen but I really hope it
will.

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aresant
New canon printers come with a app to print directly from iPad and iPhone over
wireless network which is truly like magic to use even though the underlying
tech is so widespread at this point.

Edit - app is called iEpp on AppStore if u r interested

