With the presentation of the iPad there has been a lot of discussion about the pros and cons of a closed system. But once you look at it from the perspective of an Enterprise, the iPad, iPhone and iPod Operating System (iPOS) is a robust, secure and trusted platform. While these attributes may be good for consumers, they are very important, if not mandatory to protect businesses from the following threats:

Viruses, Hackers

The iPad runs each application in a sandbox and does not offer a shared file system. This may very well be the best foundation for a secure operating system. Incidents like last Christmas’ hack into Google, Adobe and other tech companies, most possibly happened due to security vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer and Adobe Acrobat. At Google they ultimately allowed the hackers to get into the Googleplex’s servers. So security starts with with secure end users devices. The iPad may be a great contender for a secure endpoint in an IT infrastructure.

Tech Support Costs

Since applications are independent of each other and the platform is standardized, they simply work. That combined with superior usability makes the device something you can learn easily and won’t need an expensive support team in your company for.

Productivity Loss

Lots of people need a portable computer to supply them with information in the real world. They don’t need multitasking. Productivity may very well be improved with applications designed for usability rather than flexibility. Users will be a lot less frustrated if they don’t have the information overload most people are facing with IM, Skype, Twitter and Email running in the background.

What’s currently keeping companies from integrating the iPad and iPhone in their infrastructure?

Legacy applications and Vendors who are hesitant to change. SOA may have made Information Systems more transparent, but lots of Enterprises run very specific applications that were either developed in-house or bought. If the software was bought, they might ask the software vendor to create an iPad version, and offer it on the app store. But if the software was created in-house, putting it on the app store for public availability probably isn’t gonna be good for for keeping your business intelligence away from your competitors.

So what should Apple change? They should offer Enterprise App Stores which are private – only accessible by the corporation’s employees. That way companies have full control over who gets to use their Apps. Just like Apple added Exchange Support to the iPhone in order to make the Business users happy, this is the next required step.

But what if Apple doesn’t do that? With Safari’s advanced html5 features and speedy Javascript, most business applications can be implemented as web apps. Html5 even allows offline storage to be used in Web Sites / Applications. So if you disconnect from the internet because you have no wifi signal and wireless data connection, nothing is lost, you just keep working. And once the internet is up again the Website will automatically sync the data. It’s like Magic.

The iPad surely seems to be a great opportunity for consumers and business users alike. Let’s see if Apple is ready to offer Enterprises more control over their holy grail – App distribution.

I have a feeling there will be lots of innovation with Apps and Web Applications driven by the iPad.

I would love to read what you think about this topic in the comments.