GigaOM » Apple

Biz spending on Macs, iPads could hit $19B in 2012

Erica Ogg — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 19:26:06 +0000

Apple’s been a beneficiary of the BYOD craze that has hit corporate IT departments everywhere. The policy resulted in lots of workers bringing not only iPhones and iPads into the office, but Macs too. But BYOD isn’t the only reason Apple’s presence is growing at your office; IT departments are also buying more Macs and iPads for employees. That’s according to a new report from Forresterpublished Friday.

In putting together the Global Tech Market Outlook for 2012 and 2013, Forrester talked to 46 major IT vendors as well as agencies like the IMF, U.S. Commerce Department and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and now estimates over the course of 2012, Apple will sell $9 billion worth of Macs and $10 billion worth of iPads to enterprise companies worldwide. That’s up from the estimated $6 billion spent on Macs and $6 billion on iPads in 2011. Forrester calls its corporate growth “the big surprise of 2011,” especially because Apple has never actively or directly targeted business users. The report notes:

The Apple assault on the corporate market has so far taken place without much formal Apple support, and probably without Apple itself understanding its full extent. That’s because corporate adoption of Apple products has been largely clandestine, occurring through three channels.

Those three channels?

IT departments buying iPads. In October, Apple reported 93 percent of the world’s Fortune 500 companies are trying out or actively issuing iPads to employees. (Expect an update on this number on Jan. 24.)
Smaller companies buying both Macs and iPads for employees. These types of companies tend to purchase devices that employees can use both at work and at home, Forrester says.
Workers BYOD-ing iPads and Macs, then harassing their IT department to support them. (For more on that, see my GigaOM Pro piece here — subscription required.)

While Apple continues to make inroads into the corporate IT market, traditional PCs are expected to lose ground: Forrester estimates global corporate spending on Windows-based PCs and tablets will decline 3 percent next year, as you can see in the chart below:

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Finance, healthcare jobs most likely to allow personal iPhones, iPads

Erica Ogg — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 05:00:22 +0000

It’s not news that more and more businesses are allowing workers to bring their smartphones and sometimes tablets of choice to the office. But would you have guessed that two of the most highly regulated industries (finance and healthcare) would be the ones leading the charge for this BYOD (bring your own device) trend? That’s what a study undertaken by Good Technology, makers of enterprise mobile security software, found. Good’s data also shows that size of the company is not an impediment to making BYOD work, and that even when workers are paid a small stipend toward a device they bring, businesses save money overall by having more productive workers.

Good’s survey includes responses from 400 of Good’s largest customers, with 2,000 employees or more, in October. And according to the results BYOD is being very clearly embraced: 70 percent of respondents said they currently let employees bring their own smartphone (or tablet) to work, 19 percent are considering allowing it, and just 9 percent said they had no plans for BYOD programs.

Being a large company isn’t a deterrent: among those polled, 80 percent that allow BYOD have 2,000 employees or more, 60 percent have 5,000 or more and 35 percent have 10,000 or more. And of those companies, half allow employees to bring their own smartphone or tablet to work as long as they pay for all the costs, while 45 percent offer some kind of stipend for employees to use toward buying a device or a way to expense monthly costs.

BYOD is not as popular among retailers and government agencies, according the the study. But the reason that it’s finding so much success at highly regulated industries, like healthcare and finance — which have very high bars for security and compliance — is the existence of software available that allays those concerns. (Like Good’s, hence their survey.) New mobile software can be installed on personal iPhones or Android phones that “create strong separation between business data and what’s happening on the personal side of the device,” John Herrema, SVP of Corporate Strategy at Good, said in an interview. That separation helps hospitals, banks and other meet compliance standards like HIPAA, PCI data security and more.

“Once you solve that problem, we’re not surprised that [these industries] are the broad adopters,” he added. “They’re very much information-driven, knowledge-driven, real-time, access-to-data-driven,” which having your favorite mobile device in your pocket can help with.

As far as what kinds of devices these workers are bringing in when given the choice, it’s not a huge shock: “Overall, our customers are absolutely activating iOS and Android to the exclusion of everything else we support,” said Herrema. “Historically, we’ve supported Windows Mobile, Symbian, some are even on old Treo devices. Bu these days it’s all about iOS and Android all night.”

The exact breakdown among smartphones brought to work (among Good’s customers) is: 60 percent are iPhones, and 40 percent Android. In tablets, it’s not that close: 95 percent of tablets brought to work are iPads, just 5 percent are Android-powered.

For those companies or IT managers hesitant about the practice, consider this: BYOD can help you save money. It’s fairly obvious that by having employees buy their own smartphone instead of issuing them a BlackBerry you’re going to see savings in your IT budget. But even those companies giving a stipend are seeing the financial benefit.

While Good found that most companies offer a stipend of $61 or more per month for mobile devices, some are varying stipend level by role of the employee. By doing that, the organization can assign how much productivity benefit they think a person with their own mobile device brings — for instance, is it worth more to have a sales director with a mobile device or a general office worker? “So they put a dollar value on that role, which puts them in complete control of the ROI calculus,” said Herrema.

Companies can save money by not buying smartphones anymore, but they get more out of each employee in terms of productivity when they have a device they can use and that they want to use.

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Mac making a move in the enterprise, grew 44 percent in Q3

Erica Ogg — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 20:04:37 +0000

It’s a pattern we’ve seen for several quarters: Apple’s Mac sales post double-digit percentage increases as the broader PC market limps along with single-digit growth. So it’s not a huge surprise to see the Mac again making progress in its battle for market share. In a report issued Thursday, Needham & Co. analyst Charlie Wolf said the Mac had reached 5.2 percent of worldwide computer sales. While that seems like a tiny slice of a huge industry — and it is — it’s the largest chunk of PC market share Apple has owned in 15 years.

Yes, 5.2 percent is significant for Apple, the computer side of which brings in huge profits for the company, but maintains a relatively low sales share compared to the HPs, Dells, Acers and Lenovos of the world. But the momentum is Apple’s right now. It’s growing both in the consumer space, where it was up 24.6 percent compared to overall PC growth of 5.3 percent, and perhaps more surprisingly, in the workplace.

Needham says Macs’ share of enterprise computer sales grew 43.8 percent during the third quarter of this year, compared to overall enterprise PC growth of 4.8 percent. And it’s been happening for a few quarters in a row. In a note to investors, Wolf wrote:

“What we initially viewed as a one-quarter blip in the business market has emerged as a durable pattern.”

Credit: Needham & Co.

The growth, as the chart shows, isn’t coming in just one area, but is spread throughout the wider enterprise market for computers. Apple saw decent gains in every sector, with the exception of government purchases, but saw significant growth particularly in “very large” and “large” businesses.

Macs are no longer much of a rarity in the workplace. For many years, there were valid reasons Macs were used mainly in the publishing and creative spaces, since software compatibility made it hard to use them elsewhere. But as consumer adoption of Macs has increased steadily in the past few years, many employees are either asking their employers in all industries to buy them the same Macs they’re using at home, or they’re just bringing in their MacBook from home to the office. And increasingly, IT departments are letting them.

Last month, analyst firm Forrester made waves by changing course and strongly recommending businesses let their employees use computers running Mac OS X, because they have “gained a reputation for reliability and low maintenance,” according to Forrester. The report found 22 percent of enterprise businesses foresee the use of Macs owned by employees “increasing significantly.”

Be sure to grab a ticket to our Net:Work conference on December 8 in San Francisco to learn more about the changing face of IT and the ongoing consumerization of workplace tech.

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Survey: For enterprise workers, iPhone beats BlackBerry

Erica Ogg — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 19:54:49 +0000

Enterprise has long been the bastion of RIM and its BlackBerry devices, but it has been infiltrated by Apple and its challenger, the iPhone. According to a quarterly survey of enterprise companies by commercial Wi-Fi provider iPass, the iPhone has a 45-percent market share of mobile employee usage, passing the undisputed king BlackBerry, for the first time.

IPass’s Mobile WorkForce Report, released Wednesday, gets its data from a survey of more than 2,300 mobile enterprise workers at 1,100 companies between the end of September and the end of October. We know many of the world’s richest companies are on the iPhone bandwagon already; Apple said last month that “90 percent of Fortune 500 companies” are deploying iPhones for their workers. But iPass’s report gives a bit of a broader picture of differently sized companies that have iPhones on their network.

IPhones’ popularity for mobile workers isn’t just a result of taking market share from RIM. The overall market is expanding too. From the report:

Today 95 percent of mobile employees have smartphones, up from 85 percent in 2010, with 91 percent using their smartphone for work — a 26 percent rise compared to 2010.

At our Mobilize conference in September, a panel of mobile IT execs declared 2011 the year smartphones cemented their place in the enterprise. “2011 was the year mobile IT was born,” Bob Tinker, CEO of MobileIron, said at the time. “It was the year the IT industry figured out mobile, and it’s the year that mobile figured out IT … Every small, medium and large enterprise around the world is going to be deploying smartphones and tablets at scale over the next 12 to 18 months.”

Tablets, according to iPass, are on the rise, but have a ways to go to be at the smartphone level of penetration in the enterprise, with 44 percent of those surveyed using an iPad at work, compared to 33 percent in the second quarter of this year.

The reason mobile devices are surging in adoption among enterprise workers isn’t necessarily because IT budgets are expanding. According to iPass:

This is due in part to the adoption of “bring your own device” policies by enterprises. Currently 42 percent of mobile employees use individually-liable smartphones for work, up from 34 percent last year.

BYO smartphone policies have grown rapidly in the last year thanks to IT departments being faced with people wanting to use their own iPhone or Android phone from home for work, something RIM never figured out. “RIM never got people to want to pay for the device themselves,” Julie Palen, SVP of enterprise telecom expense management company Tangoe, said in September. “That’s what Apple brought. And Android and Google followed.”

To learn more about the needs of the mobile work force, be sure to attend our Net:Work conference in San Francisco on Dec. 8.

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Forrester to your IT dept: Let them use Macs

Erica Ogg — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 18:11:10 +0000

Forrester made some waves in the IT world Thursday morning when it released a report strongly urging large enterprise companies to let their employees use Macs at work, or as they phrased it “it’s time to repeal prohibition.” That’s kind of a big deal since the analyst firm has for years recommended the exact opposite. So why the sudden change?

Employees are not only asking IT departments for Macs at work, they’re bringing their own into the office. The Forrester report finds that 22 percent of enterprise businesses foresee the use of Macs owned by employees “increasing significantly.” But at the same time 41 percent of those same companies don’t allow those employees to access e-mail or the company network on those machines, either at the office or from home. As analyst David Johnson writes, that just encourages people to spend their own time figuring out how to bypass these rules:

That leaves a lot of employees to find their own ways to get around corporate prohibition. Companies Forrester spoke with for this document described a gray market emerging internally, where employees share tips and strategies to use their Macs at work and bypass corporate roadblocks.

Forrester says you may as well let Mac users have them out in the open and accessible to the network at work since their study shows that people who want to work on MacBooks, for instance, classify as a “power notebook user.” To them that means those employees are the ones that work longer and are more productive. Another reason for the change of heart: Forrester says Macs “have developed a reputation for reliability and low maintenance.” What IT person in charge of the budget doesn’t want to hear that?

But while the guys managing desktop and laptop deployment may still need to get with the program, the teams managing mobile IT have already seen the light on letting employees have input on their devices. Since the arrival of the iPhone and Android smartphones, this same phenomenon has been taking place. A group of mobile IT specialists talked about it at GigaOM Mobilize in San Francisco last month.

Julie Palen, SVP of Tangoe, says that a great percentage of employees are not asking their employers for a corporate phone. They don’t mind paying for a device or the plan as long as they can use a device of their choice and access the company network, she said.

“It’s irrelevant who owns the device or who pays for the plan,” said Palen. “It’s all about the device, as long as the data is secure and controlled … then that’s the big change and the answer becomes yes.”

Because the tools are there to secure those networks, companies are basically silly not to let tech-savvy employees use their own devices. And mobile IT guys finally figured it out this year, the Mobilize panel agreed:

“2011 was the year mobile IT was born,” said Bob Tinker, CEO of MobileIron. “It was the year the IT industry figured out mobile, and it’s the year that mobile figured out IT … Every small, medium and large enterprise around the world is going to be deploying smartphones and tablets at scale over the next 12 to 18 months.”

It’ll be interesting to see what kind of effect Forrester’s exhortation has over the next year or so. Will IT managers take it to heart, or just continue business as usual? We can guess which option employees would want.

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RIM’s pain could be Apple’s enterprise gain

Darrell Etherington — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 14:54:11 +0000

A new survey of business professionals out of the U.K. reveals that RIM’s recent network problems could work out very well for enterprise adoption of Apple’s iPhone. A survey of 500 professionals in various industries conducted by office space locator Officebroker.com revealed a lot of individuals interested in jumping ship and Apple’s platform as the life raft of choice.

Forty percent of respondents indicated a desire to take flight from the beleaguered RIM, which recently unveiled its next-generation BBX (the name of which itself is under fire) platform for smartphone devices. Of that group, 64 percent said the iPhone was the device they’d switch to. Just under a quarter indicated they’d consider switching to Android, and a distant 5 percent said a Windows Mobile handset would be their next phone of choice.

That’s no surprise, since iPhones, along with iPads, are still far and away the preferred mobile devices in terms of new enterprise activations, as a recent report affirms. The media attention and early sales success of the iPhone 4S probably also have a lot to do with Apple’s mobile devices being at the fore of consumer minds, and the addition of iMessage in iOS 5 provides a handy BBM replacement for RIM fans to slide into.

RIM is also facing a huge transition that will be a challenge for the company as it adopts BBX. BBX will require new apps (it’s QNX-based, like the PlayBook OS) and users of current-gen BB OS 7 devices likely won’t be able to upgrade. While RIM makes the jump from its old platform to the new, Apple will have a good opportunity to win over even more enterprise users to the iPhone and to iOS.

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Dutch Senate goes digital thanks to iPads

Darrell Etherington — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 15:33:37 +0000

The Dutch Senate is going paperless, and the iPad is going to get them there. The upper house of parliament for the Netherlands was told two weeks ago it would only have paper to rely on for one more week, after which point, the iPad and a special Senate-specific app would replace documents and printouts (via Reuters).

Dutch Senators are the first in Europe to try such an ambitious project, and two weeks into the experiment, reported being mostly “delighted” with how it’s progressing so far. Some document printing is still permitted, but by and large, reference information, calendars, proposed legislation, correspondence and meeting notes are handled through the special Senate app on iPads.

While the program, including the app development and iPad purchases, cost €150,000 (around $204,150 USD), Dutch Senate Secretary General Geert Jan Hamilton told Reuters it would save the Senate around €140,000 in paper printing costs during the first year alone. After that, upkeep for the program will only be around €35,000 per year, so the Senate will quickly be able to recoup their initial investment and save plenty besides.

The program by the Dutch Senate is only the latest example of a growing push to replace paper workflows and supporting documents with digital equivalents via the iPad. Airlines are also testing similar programs, as are local municipal governments in the U.S., and medical professionals. The iPad’s disruptive effective in government, education and business may eventually become its most financially advantage outcome for Apple. Though it will take longer to materialize than the iPad’s consumer success, since large organizations move at a slower pace than the average gadget-buyer, we could eventually see the iPad become for business what the Dell PC tower once was.

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Is ‘cool’ Apple’s key to the future of enterprise?

Darrell Etherington — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 16:01:02 +0000

Apple is making inroads among enterprise customers like never before, thanks in large part to the success of its mobile devices. Those devices, combined with the cool factor surrounding Apple devices, could be the key to future adoption of all Apple products by business, Macs included, according to a growing number of experts.

Zdnet ‘s Larry Dignan spoke to Bausch + Lomb CIO Alan Farnsworth in an interview published Friday, and Farnsworth said that part of Apple’s strength in enterprise applications is the ability of its devices to maintain the interest of employees who otherwise might not pay much attention to IT initiatives. Bausch + Lomb was early to adopt the iPad, and now has 1,700 Apple tablets deployed. The company uses iPad 2s for employees who deal with customers regularly, and shifts older models to other workers, including some on the manufacturing floor, according to the Zdnet report.

Farnsworth also said that Mac support is on the way, in an effort by IT to meet employees where they’re already comfortable:

If you let people communicate at work like they do at home they will be more productive. We had iPhones before iPads and we ramped up with Apple once we started using the iPad. Now we have Mac pilots underway.

Ingenix CIO Art Glasgow also believes that cool is more of a factor than some might think when it comes to enterprise deployment. A couple of months ago, Glasgow told ReadWriteWeb that the iPad has the double threat of being both cool and useful:

Cool matters and usability rules the day so devices like the iPad have to be not just accounted for, but designed for. The good news is that devices like the iPad aren’t just cool. They are flexible, multifunction tools that are changing the way we work and create and in that sense may very well be not just an innovation themselves, but a catalyst to innovations.

You could argue that the value of Apple’s coolness factor is more of a secondary consideration when it comes to its enterprise success, but I think there’s actually plenty of evidence to the contrary. Dell executive Andy Lark, for instance, pointed out a number of fairly good reasons why the iPad isn’t practical in the enterprise, and there are no shortage of articles with sound arguments against the adoption of Apple products by IT departments.

Apple faces a lot of technical challenges in convincing companies to deploy its products, but they’re adopting them anyway, with 91 percent of Fortune 500 companies testing or deploying iPhones as of July. That’s because Apple’s biggest strength for enterprise users lies in the cachet that comes with the Apple brand. Enterprise users are consumers, too, so both internal and external clients at any corporation are, by and large, going to be drawn to Apple products, which can streamline the adoption of new tech initiatives among employees and help sell to customers.

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Apple Store set to open right in RIM’s backyard

Darrell Etherington — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 15:46:16 +0000

Apple is preparing to open five new retail stores internationally on Saturday, including one smack dab in the middle of competitor Research In Motion’s home territory of Waterloo, Ontario. Apple continues to grow its physical retail presence, which it has cited as a major contributor to the success of devices like the iPad.

The new Waterloo location (at the Conestoga Mall) seems significant, considering that the city’s biggest claim to fame is being the home of RIM, maker of the BlackBerry smartphones and software. Apple’s other stores in Canada to date have generally been located either in major urban centers, or in communities bordering such metropolitan areas. Waterloo, a university town with a reputation for being Canada’s Silicon Valley, thanks in large part to RIM’s presence there, still only has a population of 98,000, swelling to around 120,000 during the post-secondary school year. Apple’s first Canadian store to venture outside of the major cities and their suburbs certainly comes with a provocative address.

Apple’s other new stores opening this Saturday include two in the U.S., and two abroad. Here’s the rest of list:

Fashion Place, Murray, Utah
Anchorage 5th Avenue Mall, Anchorage, Alaska
Southland, Cheltenham, Victoria, Australia
I Gigli, Florence, Italy

Apple’s planned retail expansion in 2011 includes a lot of international growth, and this crop of openings definitely reflects that. Any readers planning to pay a visit to any of these locations during their inaugural weekends?

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iPad’s enterprise growth bested only by iPhone

Darrell Etherington — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 14:27:15 +0000

The iPad is leading the tablet charge in small and medium-sized businesses (SMB), resulting in a growth spurt that puts the Apple device out in front of nearly all other comers when it comes to new ActiveSync activations performed by enterprise cloud services provider Intermedia. I say nearly because there’s still one device that sees even more activations: the iPhone.

Source: Intermedia. Click the image for more.

Intermedia handles around 350,000 premium hosted Microsoft Exchange servers, making it the largest such email provider operating worldwide. It surveys the device makeup of its customers’ ActiveSync-capable smartphones and tablets (basically any device that isn’t a BlackBerry) in the process of running said servers, gathering the data in cloud mobility reports.

This time around, for the period between the end of May and August, iPad activation rose a considerable 102 percent compared to the period immediately preceding it, making it the number two most-activated device (including smartphones) that Intermedia supports. The breakdown of total activations for the period saw the iPhone at number one with 51 percent overall, followed by the iPad with 21 percent. Rounding out the top five were Motorola devices with 9 percent, HTC handsets with 8 percent, and finally LG, Nokia, Palm and Samsung devices with a combined total of less than 4 percent.

Apple’s success with SMB customers can likely be accounted for somewhat by the greater willingness of smaller enterprise customers to embrace “bring your own device” models of IT hardware support, but it’s a trend that seems to apply equally among enterprises of all sizes.

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Town finds iPads make paperless painless

Darrell Etherington — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 18:21:45 +0000

The town of Cornelius, N.C. ~~Colo~~. has found that a new pilot program replacing paper with iPads is saving the administration money, time and helping the environment along with increasing government transparency, according to the Huntersville Herald. Cornelius Mayor Jeff Tarte and the town’s five commissioners were each issued an iPad 2 recently, paid for by the town, which they premiered at the town’s board meeting on Monday, June 20.

The iPads all plug into the town’s NovusAgenda software, providing commissioners with all necessary meeting materials, including budget worksheets, zoning maps and PowerPoint presentations, which once comprised 210 pages of printed materials each. These packages used to be distributed in paper form to 19 members, which meant a whole lot of time spent copying, and money spent leasing and maintaining copy equipment, in addition to the cost of supplies.

Town Manager Anthony Roberts says he’s amazed with how much sense it makes to use iPads and digital material instead of paper. “It’s just a no brainer,” he told the Huntersville Herald. “We used to print all those agenda packets and people threw them in the recycling bin after the meeting.” Plus, Roberts says, going digital helps transparency, since “the beauty of this system is you have everything online. It’s there forever and a day, and the general public sees everything.”

There’s an initial expense associated with the system, but the NovusAgenda software is a one-time fee that should last years, and the iPad 2s are actually relatively cheap, since only the 16 GB Wi-Fi versions are required. Roberts says the city spent between $700 and $800 on each laptop it was purchasing anyways, so the iPad is a much more economical solution. With a gradual rollout, there’s no reason to think the savings wouldn’t scale for larger cities, too.

The iPad is winning fans in government, business and education because it’s easy to use for almost anyone, and because it’s very flexible thanks to its support of custom apps that plug into third-party systems and server software. Cornelius is a good example of how it can have an impact at the municipal level, and Roberts points out a very good reason why we might see other cities (many of which are facing budget crunches) follow suit: “People ask why? To save money. They’re cheaper. That’s why.”

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In business, the iPad is for bigwigs and shot-callers

Darrell Etherington — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 16:27:05 +0000

The iPad’s assault on the enterprise definitely appears to be a top-down phenomenon, according to a new report by the makers of iOS app TradePub.com. Seventy-one percent of the app’s registered users hold a title of ‘Manager’ or greater, TradePub says. The report also reveals some interesting statistics about how those decision-makers use their Apple tablets in the course of doing business.

In addition to the 71 percent of iPad users (drawn from TradePub’s 30,000-strong installed base) who were at least managers, 48 percent of were at the level of “Director” or above. While TradePub’s audience may skew toward higher-level employees because of the nature of its content (it offers trade magazine and technical support documentation downloads), this does back up previous reports that the iPad is generally seeing a top-down adoption pattern in general.

TradePub’s report also showed that users consume more content on the iPad than on the iPhone. TradePub.com app users in general request 45 percent more reports and assets from the iPad app than they do from the iPhone app. It makes sense, if you consider that the iPad’s 9.7-inch screen is more conducive to reading than the iPhone’s smaller 3.5-inch display. Longer-form content works best on the iPad, TradePub concludes, which is probably why two-thirds of U.K. iPad owners use it for reading newspapers and magazines, too.

Surprisingly, the top days for accessing content from the TradePub app were on weekends. TradePub attributes this to professionals shifting industry research and catching up with trade trends to the weekend to avoid work-related interruptions. The app’s presence on the iPad might also be a contributing factor, since the device can blur the lines between work and home use. Late evenings and Sundays were the most popular times for app access.

The iPad seems to be getting use as a tool that enables enterprise users to better stay on top of work after hours and during down time — worth considering if you’re a business thinking about deploying iPads as a way to extend productivity.

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Apple’s Enterprise Reach Growing Thanks to iPad and iPhone

Darrell Etherington — Fri, 13 May 2011 16:57:57 +0000

Android may have passed iOS once and for all in terms of device activations, but Apple is still winning in the enterprise market, according to Microsoft Exchange hosting provider Intermedia. Of all ActiveSync-capable smartphones activated by its 320,000 enterprise customers, 61 percent were iPhones, compared to only 17 percent Android smartphone devices. But the real hero of the enterprise story is the iPad, which is dominating in the tablet space.

The remaining 22 percent of smartphone activations fell into the “other” category, which includes Windows Phone devices, as well as Symbian and Palm smartphones. The iPhone grew its share of all activations in April to 64 percent, and Android also saw an increase, with 33 percent of all new devices brought online during the month. Note that Intermedia’s stats do not include BlackBerry devices, since they don’t use ActiveSync.

While Apple maintains a strong lead with iPhones, the story regarding tablets is even more heavily weighted in favor of iOS. Intermedia saw 900 and 1,200 new iPad activations in March and April, compared to a monthly average of around 300 before that. iPads accounted for 99.8 percent of all new tablet activations, with the remaining tiny fraction split between the Samsung Galaxy Tab, the Motorola Xoom, and the Huawei S7.

Enterprise adoption of the iPad is impressive by all accounts. During its last quarterly earnings call, Apple said 75 percent of the Fortune 500 are actively using or testing the iPad for deployment. (Eighty-eight percent are doing the same with the iPhone.) Another report from a different enterprise hosting firm back in January found the iPad was quickly growing its slice of the enterprise iOS adoptions pie. I hear reports daily about iPad deployment programs at businesses large and small. Most recently, I was told that at most major Canadian law firms (some of which are arms of much larger international organizations), the iPad has become an omnipresent sight, especially among senior partners.

Apple’s success in the enterprise can be attributed to its ability to bring the iPad to market as a finished product with a smooth and dependable user experience, something Google has been unable to do thus far with its Android operating system. Enterprise IT is far less likely to take risks on an unproven platform than consumers, and while Android is a proven hit with consumers, it still hasn’t shown itself to be on par with iOS in terms of OS stability, regardless of whether you’re looking only at tablets, or at smartphones as well.

Reports also rightly point out that Google Android is much less secure than iOS, which is bound to scare off IT departments already reluctantly dealing with the risks involved with allowing consumer devices in the enterprise. Finally, Android OS fragmentation is a considerable issue when it comes to being able to provide comprehensive IT support.

Android may be doing a good job of cornering the consumer market, but all indications are that Apple is the one making real inroads among enterprise customers. Thanks to the iPad, the aggressive growth position iOS occupies in the business world may become a dominant one before too long, especially if we continue to see big activation numbers like those reported by Intermedia during March and April.

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Bringing Your New iPad 2 to Work

Geoffrey Goetz — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 22:20:33 +0000

As most companies have looked to cut costs any way they could, the result has been a workforce equipped with underpowered devices, plastic enclosures and an outdated mobile paradigm that require most users to carry around a mouse and power cord to be of any real use. Most business users have simply had enough, and for a very affordable price, are starting to fund their own IT revolution by bringing their new iPads to the workplace. Here’s how you can do the same.

Getting Connected

Getting a new iPad 2 is only half the battle. Once you’re at work, before you can reclaim the time you once lost to reboots or hunting for the one free power outlet in the conference room, you realize you need to get connected to the corporate network. For the most part, establishing a new connection to your place of work’s wireless network is quite easy. If you’re running into any issues when connecting, Apple has updated its iPad networking troubleshooting guide. You may also need to contact your IT help desk if you’re unsure about any of your connection settings.

While getting connected may have its technical challenges, don’t be too quick to overlook your company’s data policies and security guidelines concerning HIPPA, COPPA, FACTA and OPPA before attaching your personal device to the network. Even once you’re connected to your business’s network, you may find you’re no longer connected to the internet. This could be because you have yet to configure the proxy settings for your network. Apple has documented a series of deployment scenarios your business can adopt if you’re not the only one who’ll be using an iPad in the workplace.

Accessing Emails Calendars and Contacts

This is where things may get a little tricky, especially if your corporate email server sits behind a firewall. If you’re going to exclusively use your iPad on your business network, they you may not have any issues. But if you plan on taking your iPad outside of that network, it will constantly keep trying to access your email server that’s no longer accessible. For this reason, it may be worthwhile to see if you can access your email via a web-based interface. Both Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes offer such solutions.

The built-in iPad Mail app will support Microsoft Exchange, MobileMe, Gmail, Yahoo, AOL and any POP/IMAP email accounts. Setup for these services is easy if you follow the steps outlined in Apple’s online assistant for configuring mail. Most business users will use Exchange to sync mail, calendar and contact data. You may need assistance from your IT help desk to identify the mail server and domain for the solution you need to connect to. Lotus Notes users also have the option to download and install the Lotus Notes Traveler app from the App Store.

If you’re interested in maintaining just your business calendar via Google Calendar and keeping other elements separate, you can set up an account specifically for that purpose, and access multiple calendars via the CalDAV interface.

Establishing a Comfortable Workspace

While the virtual keyboard is great when on the move, there are times when your needs are a little more intense. I’ve always liked the BookArc ($29.99) from Twelve South paired with an Apple Wireless Keyboard. Another great option from Twelve South is the Compass Mobile Stand ($39.99).

JustMobile also has an impressive lineup of iPad stands, including the Slide ($39.99), the UpStand ($49.95) and the Encore ($59.99).

Sharing Ideas with Colleagues

There are thousands of apps that can help you express your ideas and make decisions that help enable your business realize its true potential. From just brainstorming a series of random thoughts in Notion’s Popplet Lite (free), to architecting the next great Internet innovation with The Omni Group’s OmniGraffle ($49.99), the options are endless.

One of the biggest trends is to replace the old school Black N Red note-taking standards of the past with more modern online repositories like Evernote (free), or if you’re looking to draft something with a little more substance, the Dropbox-powered Elements ($4.99) may suffice. When reviewing the work of others, I’ve also found the PDF annotation capabilities of GoodReader ($4.99) quite useful.

You may also find you don’t need more traditional editing applications like DocumentsToGo, QuickOffice, Numbers and Pages as much. I would, however, recommend using Keynote to at least start drafting a presentation or outlining a new idea. Once you’re ready to share, connecting an iPad to an HDTV via HDMI or to a projector via VGA requires only a simple hardware accessory.

Now More Than Ever

At the latest iPad launch, I was able to talk with many individuals who all shared a common need, which was to have a simple, portable, powerful connected device. It struck me as I was conducting the latest round of iOS benchmarks that Moore’s Law may no longer be applicable, as Apple has found a way to enable individuals to think and communicate using less energy and less computing power, not more. You may not be using your iPad in the workplace yet, but even if that’s the case, the day when you will isn’t far off.

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Apple’s iOS Maintains Enterprise Edge Over Android

Darrell Etherington — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 17:30:13 +0000

Android may have done much in the past year to catch up to, or even surpass Apple’s presence in many smartphone markets, but there’s one area where Apple’s mobile OS still has a strong lead: the enterprise. According to a new report, iOS still maintains more than double the rate of new enterprise activations when compared to Android.

The report (PDF), from enterprise software provider Good Technology, says that Apple’s iOS accounted for 65 percent of enterprise activations during the fourth quarter of 2010. Android, by comparison, accounted for only 30 percent of new activations. Good’s software manages mobile devices that use both iOS and Android platforms, but doesn’t work with BlackBerry or Windows Phone 7 devices. The company provides service for thousands of customers, including more than 40 among the Fortune 100. The findings in Good’s report reflect the experience of over 2,000 enterprise customers in total.

Much of the recent success of iOS in the enterprise can be attributed to the iPad, according to Good. The iPad grew to represent more than 20 percent of all iOS activations in its first eight months of availability. Unsurprisingly, the health care industry led the initial charge for iPad adoption (tablet computers weren’t strangers to hospitals even before the iPad’s introduction), but the financial services area is now the leader in iPad activations, and growth continues to be strong in that sector. Government, high tech, entertainment and other sectors trailed in terms of embracing Apple’s tablet. The iPad’s share of overall activations rose from 14 to 22 percent in the fourth quarter alone.

The iPhone was no slouch, either. The iPhone 4 was the most popular device by activations overall, with more than twice as many activations as any other advice during the month of October. The iPad was the second most frequently activated device during the quarter, and the iPhone 3GS continued to perform well, coming in third overall. The Motorola Droid X and Droid 2 both gave strong performances as well. There are so many different Android devices in use, Good says, that only a few very popular devices crack the top 10 in monthly activations, with the remainder taking up many of the spots below that threshold. No Android tablets cracked the top 10 for the quarter.

Good Technology concludes its report by predicting that 2011 will be the year of the tablet (a statement with which developers would seem to agree), led by the iPad, when it comes to new enterprise activations. I anticipated as much in my recent post for WebWorkerDaily, and Good’s conclusion about the changing roles of smartphones and tablets in the enterprise mirror my own thoughts in that piece:

We predict that in 2011, the iPad, along with other tablets, will be increasingly purchased and deployed by enterprises to meet specific business needs. This contrasts with smartphones, which we predict will continue to be driven primarily by the “Bring Your Own Device” model and more general productivity benefits.

The ability of Android to benefit from this trend will be dependent upon the quality of the Honeycomb tablets that emerge. The fact that Google is now providing a version of its mobile OS tailored to tablets should help increase enterprise adoption of the platform, but can it catch up to the iPad, especially now that many businesses for whom tablet usage makes the most sense have already invested significantly in Apple’s OS?

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iPad in the Enterprise: Where Business Meets Consumers

Darrell Etherington — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 17:30:18 +0000

The iPad is doing well among enterprise customers, and for good reason. It facilitates the interaction of businesses and clients. Two new use cases show that, regardless of what you’re using for internal communications, the iPad is where it’s at for client-focused technological initiatives.

Selling Health

First, the iPad continues its well-documented success in the health industry, this time with medical device-maker Medtronic Inc. CIO Michael Hedges has purchased 4,500 iPads for Medtronic, which has around 40,000 employees. The volume purchase came after a successful pilot project with 10 iPads just after the device’s launch.

Hedges bought the 10 tablets for use on Wednesday, April 8 2010 at a trade show in Germany. The iPads replaced larger, more expensive displays traditionally used by the company. People came to check out the booth just to see the iPads, which hadn’t yet been released in Europe at the time.

The 4,500 iPad purchases that followed made sense to Hedges because they work wonderfully for showing off products to clients when you can’t bring physical samples with you. Try fitting an MRI machine in your luggage. The iPad supports video and can grab data in real time, making it better than any glossy sales catalogue. Hedges also pointed out that the iPad is instant-on, a huge boon when it comes to using gadgets with impatient clients and tough-sells.

Selling Cars

iPads are also being used by BMW for the South Florida International Auto Show in Miami, taking place right now. Instead of the usual specification panels used by auto-makers at these kinds of shows, BMW wanted to provide potential customers with an interactive experience, and the iPad just fit the bill.

Using BMW’s digital configuration app on the iPads, show attendees can customize car color, interior and wheel options for each model. They can also provide contact information for local BMW dealers if they’re interested in finding out more about a car or scheduling a test drive. The technology clearly has the potential to make its way from the trade show floor to the sales floor of every dealership, which is exactly how some auto-makers are already employing the iPad.

Selling Anything

Both cases speak to the same truth: whenever business has to speak to customers or clients, the iPad can help. Even if you’re just using your website via the device to show clients what you have on offer, it’s better than paper because it’s searchable and supports multimedia content. Also, there’s the “wow” factor of the iPad itself, something which it doesn’t seem to be set to lose anytime soon.

Businesses want iPad presence. Canada’s leading grocery chain is working on iOS apps for all of its major lines of business, which include banking and houseware sales, according to a reliable source. That same company also provides iPads to all of its executives, and the CEO is said to be very familiar with the platform. The reason? Apple created an ideal consumer-focused device, and for any industry where working closely with clients and customers is of utmost importance, that’s exactly what business is looking for.

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