World Crisis Online

Written By Mitch Cline

The tablet computer ranks among the fastest growing consumer electronics products. According to recently released Accenture research, tablets are growing faster than e-book readers, Blu-Ray players, mobile phones, smart phones, netbooks or any other gizmos on the market.

One of the most important drivers for the rapid growth is the quick adoption of tablets in the corporate arena. During the next few years, tablet computers could replace many corporate desktop and laptop personal computers. The reasons: they are typically smaller, lighter and more portable than conventional laptops, and nearly  as feature-rich.

The tablet market is part of the broader adoption of consumer electronics devices in the enterprise. To address this expansion, executives throughout the consumer electronics industry – and chief information officers of corporations – should move now to capitalize on the market opportunity, or risk falling behind the competition.

Consider these facts:

• Consumer electronics device spending per person totaled $1,100 two years ago, for the first time surpassing the spending per employee on corporate IT hardware.
• The annual growth rate for consumer spending is rising at 8 percent per year; corporate IT hardware spending is falling by 3 percent.

The trends are redefining the nature of the consumer buying consumer electronics. The definition has broadened beyond, for instance, a consumer buying a tablet computer at a retail store. The definition now compasses CIOs as well as sales and R&D execs.

CIOs need to evaluate which technologies are most suitable for their companies. They have to decide whether to allow employees to use their smartphones and tablet PCs on the corporate network. They should assess if tablet computers can be used in the enterprise to boost employee efficiency and productivity. They need to figure out which operating systems should be used and how they can co-exist seamlessly and economically. With the growing fragmentation of operating systems for tablet computers, smartphones and traditional laptop and desktop PCs, CIOs need to make investment decisions about which ones to buy and integrate and, possibly, which ones to stop using. These are complex decisions.

The biggest risk in the growing proliferation of devices is security. With the diversity of devices, and an increasing reliance on open systems, the potential for more cyber attacks is growing.

These corporate technology leaders have to balance the benefits of using more consumer technology in the enterprise versus the risks to securing their firm’s intellectual property. These security threats will be key factors in determining which companies are more or less aggressive in deploying consumer devices. Because of these security hurdles, employee demand to use more consumer technologies will probably exceed the willingness of CIOs to offer all of what they want.

The business opportunities materializing as a result of consumer technology movement into the enterprise are considerable. Yet the security threats are also significant. Companies that move fast to navigate through this promising and complex business situation will be the most likely to accelerate towards high performance.

Mitch Cline is the global managing director of Accenture’s Electronics and High-Tech practice.