An informal survey of more than 5,000 Citrix customers point to the popularity of the iPad among businesses and the enterprise, and to the still spotty response by IT management for access to company resources.
Support within organizations appears strong: some 72 percent of respondents said they currently have access to corporate resources. More than 60 percent of respondents said they were prepared to purchase an iPad for work. Company purchases of iPads came to 43 percent.
The number of people depending on the iPad and using it daily (46 percent) is remarkable given it’s only been on the market for 7 months. In fact 13 percent say the iPad is mission critical for their job. If a business can increase employee productivity and respond faster to customers, the payback can be significant.
The look on the upside is revealing: 88 percent said the iPad increases the means to work remotely, whether at home or “anywhere.” A close second place was the iPad’s help in increasing productivity and computing satisfaction. And more than half of respondents (59.3 percent) said that it allowed access to business applications and documents while keeping data secure. Perhaps this last item is all about the remote wipe capability of the iPad.
Some respondents (32 percent) appear to believe they can do without some other computing devices (likely notebooks). A similar number believe that the friendly iPad needs less tech support than PCs.
Of the respondents whose company IT organizations aren’t supporting iPad access to corporate servers, the Top 5 reasons were the following:
- Security lead the way with 63.4 percent.
- Company policies say no to company data stored on any hardware other than a company PC (37.3 percent).
- The iPad is a “non-standard device (36.6 percent).
- The iPad doesn’t support corporate applications (24.1 percent).
- Lack of resources or skill to support it (23.9).
Other reasons included problems meeting compliance requirements, the view that the iPad is an entertainment device, BlackBerry-only shops, belief that you can’t run Windows applications on an iPad, and lack of technology to support the iPad.
The vast majority of those currently out of luck on the access front (77 percent) want their organizations to permit access for their personal iPads. The story on corporate purchases (as opposed to employees buying their own) was a bit mixed with a 56.9 percent response.