iPad In The Enterprise Meme Continued

The tech media is busy talking about how iPad is entering today’s enterprises along with other smartphones. I have also talked about this topic many times in the past. Today, GigaOm’s theAppleblog carried an article about enterprise penetration of iPad. Darrell Etherington, the author of the post, was highlighting some evidences which points to enterprise adoption of iPad. They are

• Jonny Evans’ observation about how large corporate players were using iPad in big numbers during EuroFinance Geneva conference, a key international event with a huge gathering from financial services industry.
• A Good Technology report showing large scale adoption of iPad, iPhone and Android by enterprises
• IBM adding developer tools to develop apps for Smartphone platforms like iOS, Android, etc.. In fact, IBM’s study showed 55% of developers surveyed by them believe that by 2015, application development for traditional computing platform will lag behind smartphone platforms

This clearly highlights a trend I pointed out in a post last week (Also, see Hutch Carpenter’s take on where iPad is headed)

With more and more cloud vendors offering their management console as iPad app, it is just a matter of time before members of IT walk around with an iPad. There are some security concerns but I think they will find a way to increase enterprise adoption. Apple may soon realize the potential of enterprise market and come up with a more enterprise friendly iOS.

In fact, Redmonk Analyst, Michael Cote, wrote a brief note introducing Groundwork 6.3 where he says

Of note for trend-watchers is their attention to the iPad as a device: they’ve spent time tweaking the UI to work in that form factor, e.g., where mouse-overs don’t exist for little pop-up windows.

This is yet another indication that iPad is fast becoming an important part of IT toolkit. If IT can embrace iPad, I don’t see why the rest of the organization is going to be hesitant about using it. I have no reason not to believe the plain anecdotal evidence provided by Jonny Evans as an indicator of enterprise iPad adoption.