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Netbooks
Although some CIOs and industry observers question the value and adoption rate of netbooks in corporate computing, Schoolar expects to see more types of netbooks introduced over the next few years, including some that have some vertical industry applications pre-loaded onto them. "They have good battery life and they're easy to carry around," notes Schoolar. "You might see more videoconferencing-type capabilities and video streaming."
"The concern with netbooks is that people are buying them thinking they're a full-fledged notebook PC and they're really scaled down, they're not intended to be your daily PC you're doing all your work on," says Steve Weinger, flash marketing manager at Samsung Semiconductor in San Jose.
Asset Management
To date, most corporate IT departments "have done abysmal jobs" of tracking their mobile computing assets, says Gold. This includes identifying end users with the devices they're using, monitoring the software applications loaded on them and tracking and maintaining mobile device licensing agreements, says Gold.
With an even greater array of mobile devices about to hit the market, CIOs will have to do a much better job of managing these assets, says Gold. He expects to see more asset management-type products such as Intel's vPro software made available over the next two years to help IT departments to monitor device and software usage. In addition, Gold expects to see security vendors develop something akin to "LoJack Lite" capabilities where IT staffers will be able to track an end user's mobile device using its BIOS. For instance, if Joe doesn't log into his mobile device within, say, eight hours, the device will be pre-set to lock up to prevent thieves or hackers from accessing its contents, says Gold.
Security
While there's already different levels of security available for mobile devices today, including two-factor user authentication tokens which can be used for Blackberries and other PDAs, security technologies for mobile devices will become much more prevalent in the next few years for corporate customers, says Gold. Forthcoming security capabilities will include smart cards and secure ID cards used to authenticate individual users with the corporate VPNs they're trying to connect through. Biometric ID cards and GPS systems will also be used to identify and authenticate users, he says.
Next: Leave Your Wallet Behind
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