Tablets: Consumer Grade vs. Commercial GradeTablets: Consumer Grade vs. Commercial Grade

The failure stats of consumer tablets should be enough to avoid adopting them in enterprise, but it seems that the low cost to acquire is appealing to some.

So the BYOD craze has left everyone somewhat on a high, believing that they can accomplish almost anything with their smartphone or iPad simply because there's an app for almost anything. It's been awhile since I mentioned this, and perhaps the message wasn't emphatic enough: "iPhones and iPads are by design not going to last long!" These are consumer products and to quote a Panasonic speaker at a regional gathering: "Consumer devices are made for the perfect world." Many consumer devices have a product life cycle of 6-12 months.

Business class means being able to survive a drop test, temperature changes or rough handling. In fact, in both enterprise and industrial use, most BYOD devices won't pass muster. Here's why consumer tablets fail.

Businesses are too enamored of consumer grade devices, while they should be looking at enterprise products. I've almost always carried Panasonic Toughbooks for fieldwork just because they last. According to Panasonic: "The Panasonic Toughbook failure rate is 2%, compared to all others with a 13% failure rate."

Panasonic presented in an Arlington, VA event in November their Toughpad lineup:

* Toughpad tablets are MIL-STD-810G and IP65 certified and resistant to dust, water and up to 5-foot drops

* The operating temperature is 14-122 degrees F vs. 32-95 degrees F for iPads

* Toughpads are MDM (Mobile-device-Management) compatible

Consumer electronics are not manufactured the same as industrial electronics. The initial costs for consumer products may be lower, but the TCO is higher when security is compromised, the device fails for reasons stated in the above graph and because there's a cost to manage the unmanageable vs. manageable (MDM) devices.

Administrators and network managers may be facing some tough decisions when it comes to supporting consumer grade appliances--chiefly what will it cost and how to maintain security? The failure statistics of consumer grade tablets should be enough to avoid adopting these devices in enterprise, but it seems that the low cost to acquire is appealing to some. Unfortunately, I think the true costs of ownership will prove that consumer products are in fact too costly to maintain for businesses, and deploying such devices may be short sighted by those using consumer devices for commercial and industrial purposes.

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