CIOIN

According to a global survey, India ranks number two in tablet penetration.

There’s no doubt that Indians are thrilled about the latest tech gadget: The tablet. Now India also has its very own home-grown tablet (the Adam, manufactured by Bangalore-based NotionInk) which was showcased at CES 2011, recently.  And then the claims of the Indian government to produce the world’s cheapest tablet at Rs 1,600.
With so much action in the tablet market, it shouldn’t be surprising that the growth rate of tablet PCs is estimated to increase by 160 percent globally this year, according to a survey by Accenture.  The annual survey focused on usage and spending on different consumer electronics among more than 8,000 respondents in eight countries: Brazil, China, India, Russia, France, Germany, Japan and the United States.
The results revealed that, although far behind China in consumption, India has the second-highest penetration of tablet PCs globally, with 10 percent of respondents owning one. Future growth for tablet PCs in India also looks strong with 10 percent of Indian respondents planning to purchase a tablet PC this year.
 What does this mean to CIOs? It means that employees are most likely to replace their PCs with a mobile phone or tablet PC soon. To help CIOs prepare for an influx of tablets, Gartner analyst Anshul Gupta, lists out some of the best practices (See Sidebar) that will enable you to embrace the tablet PC in
the enterprise.

Best Practices

Be prepared to manage the challenges of consumerization of IT. More tablets are going to get into the corporate space. In mature markets, Gartner expects 20 percent of mobile devices in businesses to be owned by employees. You need to make necessary changes to corporate policy to ease the use of mobile devices for your employees, while maintaining the integrity of corporate data.

Adopt thin clients. The advent of the tablet in the enterprise will greatly affect IT architecture. Enterprises should adopt thin clients so that they can
manage more end-points at controllable costs.

Create a device management strategy.  Tablets run on a host of different platforms such as Symbian, Android, Windows etcetera. The challenge is
to manage and integrate multiple platforms for which you need a clear cut device management strategy.

Invest in Data loss prevention. As corporate data starts to reside on mobile devices, invest in proper data loss prevention measures to avoid incidents of data loss and maintain data security.