With the announcement of Microsoft Surface the pendulum appears to be swinging back to the Microsoft camp for enterprise tablets.
How will Surface impact mobile video conferencing ? With Microsoft Lync installed and if connected to VCEverywhere then Surface will be able to communicate with any other device or VC room from anywhere.
With Microsoft announcing the launch of the Windows 8 based “Surface” tablet they have seen a gap in the market. Tablet computing has hit the consumer market by storm with Apple and Samsung being the major players, but within the enterprise market there has been little penetration. Blackberry and Cisco have both failed miserably with their Playbook and CIUS whilst Apple and Samsung still do not have the features being demanded by IT security and infrastructure departments.
In the enterprise world a new laptop for example must work with existing management and security tools and it must be able to run the company’s existing applications. These are often internally developed applications designed to run on Windows. This will be key to the success of Surface within the enterprise.
The Microsoft difference should allow enterprises to continue to use their same management toolset and internal applications but just extend the profiles to include “Surface” users. When “Surface” can be treated no differently to a laptop then it makes the case for implementation becomes a whole lot easier.
The Surface, will no doubt come with MS Lync embedded which will bolster Microsoft’s penetration into unified communications and videoconferencing. Adding connectivity to VCEverywhere will allow Surface to participate in video conference calls with any room based system, iPad, iPhone, Desktop or Mac both within and outside of the organisation.
By far the majority of laptop users in the enterprise also have a desktop PC it will be interesting to see the impact that Surface will have on traditional standalone video conferencing devices and on desktop video conferencing. It makes much more sense to have video conferencing running on Surface and remove the additional desktop appliance all together and that follows why would I want video conferencing installed on my PC at all taking up valuable screen real estate?
It is clear from the exterior design; to the magnetic cover of the Surface that Microsoft intend to go head to head with Apple but also providing some extras like USB 3 in the Pro version. Two questions do remain: How will Microsoft price the Surface? And how will Windows 8 be received by the enterprise?
There are certainly interesting times ahead and subsequent to the release of Windows 8, how will the likes of HP and Dell respond with their own hardware. The unveiling of Microsoft Surface certainly seems to swing the pendulum back over to the Microsoft side.
Mark Stainton-James is a recognised technology leader with over 20 years of experience in managing global teams and setting technology strategy for many of the worlds leading financial institutions.
http://www.VCEverywhere.com is a video conferencing exchange provider allowing any video conferencing endpoint to communicate with any other endpoint regardless of platform.
