Business Technology Roundtable

The early-adopter trials have begun, the commercial apps are being developed -- it's now a given, purpose-built tablets will be used in more mainstream business settings during 2012. Besides, executives and IT managers at multinational companies will likely witness this phenomenon first, particularly in the more advanced markets. According to the latest market study by International Data Corporation ( IDC ), media tablet shipments in EMEA reached more than 12 million units in the first three quarters of 2011 -- growing to 20 million units by the end of the year. Although business purchases currently represent less than 10 percent of the entire tablet market, the near-term opportunity for growth from business use is believed to be significant -- including online collaboration applications. Functionality such as a touch screen user-interface, portability, secure LAN connectivity and more business apps for vertical industry needs, are all factors that demonstrate the potentia

The proof-positive business impact from managed cloud services deployment, including the numerous associated productivity benefits and anticipated cost-savings, have pushed cloud computing well into the mainstream during 2011. As we move into 2012, International Data Corporation ( IDC ) predicts that this evolution will continue as more users test the growing capabilities of the public cloud services that are already available. However, by 2015, IDC envisions a very different scenario -- one where cloud services will become commonplace, thereby forcing significant changes in the ongoing adoption of progressive business technology practices throughout legacy IT organizations. "In the next 24 months, the 'cloud' as a marketing label will cease to exist, as the success of cloud services will mean that it will permeate the sourcing strategies of the CIO and business unit manager alike," says Chris Morris, Lead Analyst for Cloud Services at IDC Asia/Pacific. He ad

Multinational company CEOs are one of the most vocal advocates of the managed cloud services phenomenon. Many have been through the painful process of watching helplessly as their CIO championed the deployment of monolithic ERP and CRM systems -- only to discover that these huge enterprise software projects failed to live up to their promise. Meanwhile, purposeful line-of-business executives have successfully utilized software-as-a-service (SaaS), with their CEO's support, to break free from the legacy IT platforms and thereby give their employees the business technology (BT) productivity tools that they had hoped for -- or that the power-users demanded. Forward-looking vendors and prescient BT service providers are now leading the transition to the next wave of productivity-enhancing and cost-reducing platforms. Next year, we'll likely witness increased market activity, as the next chapter of this story unfolds. In anticipation, Cisco has pro-actively presented its cloud