By 2014, 90 per cent of organisations are expected to support corporate applications on personal devices.

In 2011, a clearer picture will emerge of how the proliferation of smartphones and the rise of tablet PCs will transform the enterprise
IT landscape.

According to Frost & Sullivan, 2011 will see smartphones gaining a greater foothold in the Asia Pacific, with 100 million devices expected to be sold during the year. This represents nearly 20 per cent of all mobile devices sold.

2011 will also see a rise in tablet PCs which will fill the niche that netbooks tried to fill. According to Frost & Sullivan, the global market is expected to reach 15-17 million tablet PCs in 2011, amounting to 6 per cent of the market share for PCs. This is expected to rise to 12 per cent
in 2014.

All these developments set the conditions for what IDC describes as a “perfect storm” created by the evolution of different areas of technology combining to create a revolution in mobility. Tablets, media tablets like iPads and large-screen smartphones can now run almost fully functional versions of all enterprise software and services. “With the move towards cloud computing, we are now seeing many of these IT systems being delivered in virtualised environments, minimising the importance of device-based computing power,” said IDC.

With this, enterprise support for tablets and mobile devices will evolve. Gartner predicts that by 2013, 80 per cent of businesses will support a workforce using tablets. It believes that the first wave of tablets will focus on content consumption, and to some extent communications, rather than content creation. “Support requirements for media tablets will vary across and within enterprises depending on usage scenario. At minimum, in cases where employees are bringing their own devices for convenience, enterprises will have to offer appliance-level support with a limited level of network connectivity (which will likely include access to enterprise mail and calendaring) and help desk support for connectivity issues.”

However, with the hype surrounding Apple's iPhone and more recently the iPad, CIOs are now being approached by C-level executives wanting these products to be connected to the corporate infrastructure and accessing confidential data, despite potential fears that CIOs may have about the risks. In IDC’s view, one possible solution to this is the use of client virtualisation. “Creating virtualised sessions would not only allow access to applications regardless of the operating system, but it could also provide the assurance that CIOs need in knowing that their corporate data is secure.”

Gartner believes that by 2014, 90 per cent of organisations will support corporate applications on personal devices. “The trend towards supporting corporate applications on employee-owned notebooks and smartphones is already under way in many organisations and will become commonplace within four years.”

It cites the example of how the rapid development of handheld functionality, together with mass adoption rates across enterprises, will lead to a change in how enterprises access business intelligence (BI) applications and herald the emergence of mobile analytics. According to Gartner, 33 per cent of BI will be accessed through mobile devices by 2014.

As IDC points out, “It truly is ‘everything’ going mobile and IDC believes 2011 will be the catalyst year for this.”

“Initially, mobile analytics will consist of porting existing reports and dashboards to the mobile, but because of the reach of mobile devices, by next year vendors will have developed mobile BI applications for specific tasks or domains,” said Gartner. “Mobile BI will enter the mainstream. As a result, organisations should be developing their mobile apps with the help of market and product management departments to create customer-facing mobile BI.”