Originally Posted by Stuart Sumner, Computing
Microsoft announced earlier this month that its Office suite of applications will be available on ARM-based tablet devices this year. But is this what enterprises want, or do tablets need to see greater enterprise-level penetration? And what does Microsoft need to do to ensure its success?
Tony Cripps, principal analyst at Ovum, said that Microsoft will have an easier job convincing businesses to invest in tablet variants of Office due to its easy integration with other
“One is how they will integrate with core business applications. But the Office suite is already one of those core applications, so they’re over that hurdle.”He sees further encouragement for Microsoft in the fact that Office is already a well-understood and widely used suite of applications.
This will help IT departments looking to expand their use of tablet devices, as user training and support costs will be lower.
Networking giant Cisco is attempting to quantify the enterprise market for tablets. So, the company spent the last several months of 2011 surveying 1,500 executives, middle management, salespeople and clerical staffs of medium to large business around the world. What they found was that, on average, enterprise IT shops handle one tablet request for every three smartphone requests across the world.
