Enterprise Tablets: What's ImportantEnterprise Tablets: What's Important

How will Cisco and Avaya keep their tablets from being seen as iPad "knockoffs?" And what model will they opt for--open or tightly controlled?

This article from Fortune reviews new tablets introduced by Samsung and Toshiba, and while the piece doesn't address enterprise tablets like the Cisco Cius or the expected release from Avaya, it has implications for these devices, some of which would seem to favor the enterprise devices, at least over non-iPad general-purpose tablets.

We don't yet know a lot about how the manufacturers really plan to position enterprise tablets, let alone how users will use them. And this larger issue is important because, as is clear from the Fortune article, the iPad is the yardstick by which all other tablets are going to be measured. Just look at the headline: Anything that's not an iPad is, to the author of this piece, a "knockoff."

He's not wrong about that, either. In this regard, the iPad is more like the iPod than it's like the iPhone. The iPhone may have changed the game for smartphones, but it still had to play the game that was already in progress; it was measured by existing yardsticks for phones, and in some regards (coverage, call quality) was found wanting.

In contrast, as the first successful tablet, the iPad set the standard, not just for narrowly-defined functionalities, but for the whole tablet experience, and enterprise-focused tablets won't be held to a different standard than the most recently-released general purpose devices; in a sense, they'll be considered "knockoffs" too. I've seen the Cisco Cius written about with reference to the iPad, which rings false if you're an enterprise-focused reader, but for an end user, it may be the default setting.

Ironically, the thing that has always irritated people about legacy enterprise communications devices (how's that for a nice way of saying "desk phones"?) is the thing that drives the better iPad experience, this writer argues: Closed-ness, or "integration of hardware, software, operating system and applications." This factor, according to an analyst quoted by Fortune, is "a major piece of what makes the device [iPad] a standout." The piece goes on to discuss interface considerations like pixels per inch and screen configuration, which i don't think should be underestimated--user experience obviously being a critical part of what Apple has won on.

Cius is based on Android, and we don't know yet about the Avaya tablet (incidentally, Avaya is touting a major announcement for September 15, which it's a good bet could involve this long-awaited device. The announcement event features Dr. Alan Baratz, who's been high on the idea of a "chameleon" device for quite a while, and discussed such a device at his VoiceCon San Francisco keynote in late 2009).

So one thing to watch is the model that the enterprise vendors present for adding applications to their tablets, specifically how open they'll be. Openness traditionally is good, everyone loves openness, yet Apple has clearly challenged that model with the iPhone and now the iPad, and Microsoft appears to have abandoned its open-development model for mobility in the wake of Apple's success.

So will the enterprise vendors tightly control their development environment, a la Apple and a la the PBX vendors of the past? (Bet that's the first time you've seen those two entities mentioned in the same sentence!) Or will they try to find a way to open up their devices to the outside world, in hopes of capturing a part of the enterprise market that aren't early iPad adopters?