Mobile won’t deliver on the  dream of the paperless office , as I argued earlier this week. We’ll read more on our tablets and even smartphones, for sure. But the ability to access and read those files on our devices also whets our appetite to print them, too. According to a February 2011  InfoTrends survey , the biggest reasons why [...]

Everyone loves the idea of a paperless office. Many technologies have tried to deliver on that green vision, but none so far have halted our tree-killing ways. PCs just made it easier for us to print more, while document management systems gave us more to print. Electronic forms, Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and digital signatures – [...]

I made it to my  first SAP TechEd conference last year. Not this year, which is a pity, since there are over  100 sessions related to mobile . I may not be able to make to the Venetian/Palazzo Congress Center, but I still plan to attend TechEd virtually, watching sessions and talks via SAP’s broadcast platform. Sessions begin at 8 [...]

Traditional retailing, at least in the U.S., is in a funk. Of the  100 largest U.S.-based retailers according to STORES magazine, only 17 are growing in the double digits. Fast risers are either growing overseas or are in hot categories like mobile phones (Verizon Wireless and AT&T) or discount goods (Dollar General). You could blame this on [...]

The tech industry attracts the worst kind of futurists,  Clayton Christensen-quoting types who behold  shifting paradigms, looming inflection points and disruptive innovations everywhere they look. The futurism business is so competitive these days that technologies get declared dying at the very moment they are actually peaking. In monarchy terms, that’s like preparing to crown the boy prince when the [...]

How long did it take for your company to upgrade to Windows 7 after it became available in July 2009? Months? Years?  Still hasn’t happened? Even the latter wouldn’t be surprising. According to Net Applications, Windows 7 only  overtook Windows XP in popularity last month. That’s more than  three years after its release. This sort of lag would never happen [...]

CurriculumLoft is the maker of the Kuno, perhaps the  most successful Android challenger to date against the iPad in K-12 schools. That’s right – this family-owned Indianapolis, Indiana firm has succeeded  against mighty Apple with its $375 tablet where Google, Samsung and Amazon have so far failed. It’s particularly impressive because among educators, Apple has the same cachet [...]

American Airlines is  rolling out 17,000 Samsung Galaxy Not e mini tablets (or phablets, if you must) to its flight attendants to improve and personalize its customer service. Flight attendants will be able to record customer meal and beverage preferences, access customer info and better identify high-value customers or those needing special assistance. The 5.3-inch Notes were chosen [...]

Schools can stumble and fail while going mobile for four reasons , I discovered earlier this month while reporting on all of the latest tablet rollouts this back-to-school season . That made me wonder: what are the reasons why  enterprises stumble or fail at their mobile rollouts? Coincidentally, several days later, I happened to be a guest on the business technology radio show,  In the [...]

There was a ton of news from Apple’s event today, many of which may have sounded earthshattering to those  nattering away on Twitter (raises hand) , but upon more reflection, are probably irrelevant to those of us in the enterprise and business worlds. Skittles Rainbow of colors for new iPod Touch? Leave that for the kids. New and improved EarPods? [...]

First, it was the Scandinavian-style  Smorgasbord. Later, it was Old Country Buffet. My parents were immigrants who grew up in a time and place where starvation was a reality. Naturally, all-you-can-eat restaurants seemed like one of America’s Greatest Wonders. When I was in elementary school, we would drive into the Big City (Minneapolis) and chow down at Valhalla [...]

As part of my research mapping  the largest iPad and other tablet deployments by schools and universities, I also updated my list of the largest publicly-known iPad deployments, including companies, governmental agencies, etc. Notable additions include Roche (formerly Genentech), now up to 13,070 iPads, McAllen School District in Texas (moved from 5,000 to 25,000 iPads deployed), Clinton [...]

My kids returned to school this week. They attend a suburban elementary school built only one year ago. Everything there is beautiful and state-of-the-art – with the glaring exception of its computing technology. Not only does the school still use computer labs, but they run an outdated platform, as I discovered after quizzing my son: Me: “Do [...]

Summer is not when CIOs usually start or ramp up major projects. Not so for SAP CIO Oliver Bussmann. Apart from a family trip to Vienna and the Croatian seaside resort of Dubrovnik,  Bussmann and his team had a full plate this summer, especially on mobile initiatives. Here are some of the highlights: 1) Introducing a new [...]

My ZDNet blogger-in-arms John Fontana is at Gartner’s (formerly Burton Group’s) Catalyst conference in San Diego this week, and wrote up two interesting pieces about mobile (even though he’s more of a security/privacy expert). The first is Gartner’s take on What’s In and What’s Out in mobile. Some of the things that are Out: Corporate devices, business tools, Crackberries, [...]

(Corrected 6 PM PT, August 21, with information provided by Avaya.) Consumer appeal has been the most important factor in the business tablet war to date. That’s because the vast majority of tablets used for work -  five-sixths, by one estimate - have been brought in by workers via their employers’  Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) programs . It’s why the [...]

My blog last week, ” University Deploying Thousands of Windows 8 Tablets Is Smart Tactics, Flawed Strategy, ” generated  quite a bit of reader reaction. I’m actually quite excited about  what Windows 8 will deliver . But I felt that Seton Hall’s plan to standardize completely on Windows 8 tablets and ultrabooks (initially all from Samsung) and effectively ban Apple and [...]

Bill Simmons, aka the  Sports Guy on ESPN/Grantland, is probably my favorite writer on the planet. In the last decade, I’ve read more words by him than anyone besides myself. There are several reasons for this. His stuff mostly appears on the Web. Like every guy I know, I stopped reading actual books around the time DSL [...]

Inexpensive homegrown tablets -  think between US$60 and $200 – abound in India, where the per-capita income, despite the fast-rising economy, remains US$3,700 per year. But the uncrowned king of inexpensive, Indian-made tablets is the Aakash tablet. I say uncrowned because the student-designed, government-subsidized Aakash has yet to hit the market. And for awhile this year, the [...]