What Companies Need to Know To Deploy Tablets Effectively
So your IT department just bought a boatload of tablets and is ready to join the ranks of some of the most tech-savvy companies in the world. Unfortunately, the process isn’t quite so simple. It may seem cut-and-dry, but enterprise mobility management for tablets remains a new beast for many organizations, and one that beckons for a lot of help.
The modern tablet remains several months shy of its second birthday, which means that experts on the issue of deploying the devices remain few and far between. But a recent Network World report detailed several areas that all companies should think about when beginning to lend support to tablets under an enterprise mobility platform.
The news provider’s recommendations were pulled from interviews conducted with officials at three companies that have implemented tablets: Bayada Nurses of Moorestown, New Jersey; Hawthorn Pharmaceuticals of Madison, Wisconsin; and the Ottawa Hospital in Canada.
1. How will they be managed?
The best solution for this issue, in most cases, is enterprise mobility management software, which provide organizations with oversight of an entire tablet deployment, including who has what device and which version of an operating system they are working on.
Also, such capabilities allow the IT department to track and govern the downloads conducted on a device, ensuring that employees are spending their time with enterprise apps and not games.
What’s more, mobility management solutions can aide a company in pushing a mobility policy out to users. That’s important to keep tablet use in line with enterprise goals and strategies.
2. Think about the apps
Figuring out how the IT department is going to push out apps and updates to tablets is among the first things an organization will want to consider, according to the report. With today’s mobile professionals leveraging apps for everything from business intelligence to videoconferencing, the company will want to ensure it has a full stable available.
Again, that can be easier said than done, now that the one-company, one-device model is all but extinct. While it’s likely most employees will have an iPad, there’s still the chance that several Android-based devices and BlackBerry PlayBooks are sprinkled in.
Some organizations have turned to cloud computing to deal with this issue, according to experts. That’s because, accessing apps from a central location will make them available to all employees, regardless of their tablet’s platform.
For some companies, enterprise mobility management remains fluid as they work their way through deployments of both smartphones and tablets. IT departments are trying out certain methods and seeing what works best for supporting the devices.
However, this should change as mobility continues its upward climb and investments in the area grow. According to ABI Research, spending on the enterprise mobility market – which includes apps, devices, support and wireless service contracts, among other areas – will reach $11 billion by 2016.