Business tablet use to soar as remote access becomes the norm

The ability for staff to work remotely on tablets and smartphones is a top priority for businesses in the private and public sectors, according to research from the National Computing Centre (NCC).

The organisation's Benchmark of IT Spending and Strategy 2011 survey found that 72 per cent of companies expect to see an increase in the use of tablets in the next two years, while 70 per cent also expect to see smartphone use grow.

Spending on laptops will remain consistent, but PC spending among businesses will decrease by 2.1 per cent by 2013 in line with other gloomy predictions for the desktop industry.

NCC managing director Steve Fox told V3 that the research underlines a continuing drive by companies to access information from any location.

"In the last report, mobile email was the biggest driver for businesses, but this has been replaced by mobile computing as firms looks to reduce their bricks and mortar environments to save costs and increase staff productivity," he said.

"Many businesses are planning to reduce their office space as more staff work remotely. It will be a cultural challenge for businesses to get used to the idea of staff working at home, but over time it's likely to start becoming more commonplace."

The survey also found that cloud technology has been the biggest growth area for many companies in the past two years.

"Cloud has really come of age. People believe in the technology and we expect most of the growth in this space to come from SMEs as they use standard applications that can be easily managed and accessed in the cloud," said Fox.

"It's the large enterprises with bespoke applications that are struggling with the idea of moving to the cloud."

The shift to the cloud comes as increasing numbers of large IT firms look to offer cloud-hosted services. EMC and Capgemini recently announced a five-year partnership to offer a range of services including storage-as-a-service.