Quarter of enterprises preparing for a course of tablets

A quarter of enterprise are using or planning to use tablet computers, according to a report from Forrester which surveyed over 2,000 executives across Canada, France, Germany, the UK and the US.

However, devices brought into the enterprise by staff are unlikely to be well catered for, as Forrester found that just two per cent support random or rogue devices, while 17 per cent are already trialling their own choice of model.

This is likely to change over time, as enterprise IT departments grow in confidence and are more assured about how to secure devices for use and the network against misuse.

Currently 70 per cent of respondents are worried about the security burden presented by consumer devices, and around 60 per cent are put off by the additional financial burden created by support requirements.

Enterprise use of the cloud is expected to grow, but again this will be influenced by departments other than IT. Forrester found cloud software creeping into organisations through departmental deployment, but official IT department adoption of the technology is flat.

Where IT departments are adopting cloud services they are likely to be more demanding of their providers, and will seek highly available and robust services, though at a budget-friendly price, the analyst added.

Server virtualisation is very much in use at enterprises, and Forrester said that over three quarters of enterprise respondents have virtualised some of their x86 servers, a four per cent increase against the same time last year.

Top hardware priorities for the rest of the year include server consolidation and virtualisation, to which 80 per cent of firms are committed, and an investment in automated virtual server management, which was cited by just under two-thirds of respondents.

By contrast, just 28 per cent of firms see the use of cloud services for virtual servers and storage as a priority.