Tablet, PC Policies Head Opposite Directions Within Enterprises

Information technology organizations in 26 percent of firms with 1000 employees or more were planning to implement, or had implemented, policies to support general purpose touchscreen tablets such as the Apple iPad. If that seems unremarkable, consider that, by the third quarter of 2010, tablets had only existed for six months. That is a very-rapid adoption profile for enterprises, indicating that the device resonates strongly.

Of that total, four percent reported they’d already implemented, and 17 percent were already piloting by the third quarter of 2010. Firms with 999 employees or less, also were adding support for tablets, with 18 percent planning to adopt, or having already implemented policies on use of tablets.

That rapid level of adoption contrasts with parallel "bring your own PC" policies, it appears. Only about two percent of firms, large and small, reported implementing or piloting bring-your-own-PC models, despite several years of hype among the desktop virtualization software vendors about this model.

Firms also have broadly embraced consumer-style Web applications on PCs, with 84 percent of firms increasing their use of Web applications recently.

One might argue that rapid tablet adoption suggests the PC is less useful, or at least less desired, by many categories of employees. It appears that many workers only need email and website access when working, much of the time. Over time, more enterprise apps likely will be adopted for tablet use. At the moment, that does not seem to be driving adoption, though. One wonders how soon it will be before the standard issue computing device, for many categories of workers, is a tablet, not a PC.

The Consumerization Of IT Proceeds Unevenly, From Growth In Tablets To Anemic BYOPC Adoption | Forrester Blogs