DisplaySearch’s projectctions indicate that vendors will ship  over 240 million tablets this year. That figure well exceeds the sales of 207 million notebook PCs that are expected to ship during the same timeframe.

This shift away from PCs as the dominant computing platform is happening even faster than many anticipated. It was less than 3 years ago that Apple released the original iPad, jumpstarting the tablet form factor that Microsoft had unsuccessfully attempted to popularize for the 10 years prior.

By 2017, DisplaySearch estimates that tablets will approach 75% of the total market for tablets & notebooks.

While the U.S. is a key contributor to the rise in popularity of tablet computers, China is another key driver  and is estimated to hold over 27% of the tablet market this year.

Not only are tablet sales increasing faster than most people anticipated, but there now seems to be a shift towards smaller form factors. DisplaySearch notes in their latest research that “in 2013 a new class of small tablets will take over the market. Tablet PCs with 7-8” screen sizes are expected to account for 45%, or 108 million units of the market in 2013, overtaking the 9.7” size which will account for 17% share or about 41 million units.”

The rapid rise of tablets, and other mobile devices will have serious implications for most businesses. As tablet computers and other mobile devices quickly take the place of traditional PCs for many users, businesses will need to rethink how they reach mobile consumers to generate new business, better engage existing customers to maintain loyalty, and secure repeat business.

More people than ever will be accessing your websites and online properties via mobile devices. Are your websites optimized for mobile users to ensure they have a good experience when they come to your website?  Are you using social media to understand your audience and convert them into paying customers?

If you haven’t optimised your website for mobile devices … if social media is still something that you don’t fully understand … if you view tablets as only consumption devices or “toys” …  you should rethink your priorities for 2013 and start preparing for a future that is driven by consumers using mobile devices and social media so that this rapid shift doesn’t leave your business vulnerable to more nimble competitors.

But how will consumer sales impact the enterprise, and is iPhone 5 ready for the enterprise?

Tom Kaneshige, writing for  CIO.com, says “there is no question the iPhone 5 will … pour into the enterprise”, and suggests that the new iphone may provide some important benefits for the enterprise.

Tom says that the larger screen and faster  processor will allow executives to “more easily and quickly consume corporate data”. The iPhone 5′s new LTE support and improved wi-fi will allow businesses to more effectively utilize streaming media and build more media-rich applications.

The new aluminum back should make the device more durable and less prone to damage, resulting in lower repair and replacement costs.

For those frequent travelers, the battery life will likely be another positive as Apple has engineered the iPhone five to slightly exceed that battery life of the current iPhone, lessening the likelihood that the mad dash for an electrical outlet before boarding that flight will be needed.

But one of the major concerns for many CIOs will be the security implications of bringing the new iPhone into their environment. According Aabha Rathee, writing for the Wall St. Cheat Sheet, “industry experts are beginning to believe that Apple can now provide the security most businesses need.”

He goes on to note that the iPhone “now has 256-bit, hardware-based encryption for data stored on the device, fairly widespread VPN support, and the ability to limit access that each app has to files and hardware resources on the phone. In addition, it allows for centralized control through third-party management software.”  He also cites a recent Trend Micro report ranked the iPhone second behind Blackberry in having the security controls required by most enterprises.

It seems safe to say that the iPhone 5, with its  larger screen, faster processor & data speeds, and more durable design is likely to be a huge hit in the enterprise. And the fact that Apple and third parties continue to improve the security and manageability of the device will allow Apple to continue to increase its presence in many companies, both large & small.

A recent report by global market intelligence firm IDC projects that PC shipments will grow less than 1% this year; the second year in a row with global growth below 2%.

The IDC claims that three factors are contributing to this decline:

1. Slowing growth in emerging markets like Asia Pacific
2. Weak economic conditions
3. Consumers delaying purchases until Windows 8 is released

While there is no doubt that these three factors are having some effect on PC sales, there is another factor that may be playing a larger role … the rapid adoption of mobile technologies by both consumers and businesses.

ABI Research anticipates that global sales of tablets will reach 100 million in 2012, and Business Insider projects that tablet sales will “explode to 450 million by 2016″.

While  most analysts expect the traditional PC to be around for quite some time, it is clear that a rapid shift to portable, mobile computing devices is well underway and that trend is likely to continue to accelerate in the next few years.

Business Insider sees four key factors driving that acceleration:

• The average sales price of tablets is falling
• Increased penetration in existing markets
• Tablets are already disruptive
• Emerging markets are ripe for tablet disruption

Some analysts believe that the disruptive nature of mobile devices, combined with their lower price points, are contributing more to the decline in PC sales growth than the economic factors or the pending release of Windows 8. In fact, Apple has seen record sales of their iPad and iPhone product lines, and their exceptional growth in sales has taken place in one of the worst economic environments of recent years.

The implications for your business are significant, and every company should be developing an I.T. strategy that acknowledges this major paradigm shift in computing.

Image courtesy Sam Churchil http://bit.ly/Ri0t8T

The answer is YES! Especially since the Information Technology function is no longer simply a cost center, as once considered by some. I.T. now drives revenue generation and is essentially “a business within a business.” In order to run an efficient technology function, finance and sourcing must be driving forces that have seats at the CIO’s executive table.

I.T. financial management is the process of providing accurate and cost effective stewardship of I.T. assets and resources used in providing I.T. services. I.T. Finance leads the planning, controlling and recovery of costs expended in providing I.T. services.

Strategic sourcing is a systematic and fact‐based approach for optimizing an organization’s supply base while reducing overall costs and improving service delivery. Key components of a company’s strategic sourcing process include:

• assessment of a company’s current spending (what is bought, where, at what prices?)
• assessment of the supply market (who offers what?)
• total cost analyses (how much does it cost to provide those products or services?)
• identification of suitable suppliers, and negotiation with suppliers.

When working effectively, a strategic sourcing process can ensure the right I.T. deals are entered into for third party products and services and the finance organization can ensure savings from these sourcing deals get tracked and reported appropriately. With an I.T. organization’s number of third party contracts increasing, and in some cases decreasing but becoming more important, both finance and sourcing are more than ever important team members that need to work together to ensure effective supplier management.

Today most I.T. organizations have one or more strategic supply partners that are critical to the success of the company’s business. And often those strategic relationships are strained and don’t feel much like a partnership.

Forrester analyst Duncan Jones, in an article published at CIO.com, highlights three characteristics that are important to maintaining successful strategic relationships:

1. Trust is more important than contract clauses
2. Co-innovation delivers more than either party could have created by itself.
3. Shared goals, risks, and rewards drive good behavior

Effective collaboration between a company’s finance and sourcing teams will be more successful in managing strategic suppliers than any single person or department acting alone, and can help ensure that your company’s strategic suppliers are indeed partners vested in the success of your company.

As Mat tells the story on Wired.com, “I realized something was wrong at about 5 p.m. on Friday. I was playing with my daughter when my iPhone suddenly powered down. I was expecting a call, so I went to plug it back in.It then rebooted to the setup screen. … I entered my iCloud login to restore, and it wasn’t accepted. … I went to connect the iPhone to my computer and restore from that backup — which I had just happened to do the other day.”

“When I opened my laptop, an iCal message popped up telling me that my Gmail account information was wrong. Then the screen went gray, and asked for a four-digit PIN.I didn’t have a four-digit PIN. … By now, I knew something was very, very wrong.”

In matter of minutes someone had accessed his Apple iCloud account and remotely wiped his iPhone, iPad, and MacBook. Everything was instantly deleted … his apps, his documents … all of his photos of his young daughter … everything gone in the blink of an eye!

So how did this happen?

It was easier than you think, and it didn’t involve using sophisticated software to crack his password. It simply involved using a few clever tricks – involving Twitter, Gmail & Amazon – that allowed the hacker to get access to Mat’s mailing address and the last four digits of his iTunes credit card number. That’s all that Apple required in order to reset Mat’s iCloud password and give the hacker full access to Mat’s data, including the ability to do a remote wipe on all devices associated with that iCloud account … which he promptly did.

You really should read Mat’s full account of what happened – it is fascinating and thought-provoking – and give serious thought to your personal online security. And if your business has a BYOD policy, your employees are using Twitter, Gmail, Dropbox, Box and other online services that could put your corporate information at risk.

So how can you avoid being hacked like Mat was? First off, you should know that Apple has suspended the ability to gain access to your iCloud account with your mailing address and the last four digits of your credit card number, so that is a temporary fix for that issue.

Farhad Manjoo, writing for Slate.com, outlines four steps you can take now to protect yourself.

1. Turn on two-factor authentication now! It’s available on Google and had Mat been using it, the hackers could not have accessed his Gmail account.
2. Back up your files! Use Time Machine on your Mac. If you’re not using a Mac, find an online service that will backup all of your files. There are many affordable options; there is no excuse to not back up your data.
3. Turn off “Find My Mac”! It is not very secure as currently implemented and will avoid allowing someone wiping your hard drive.
4. Create a single, secret account for all password resets! Don’t use your current email address for this; make it difficult for a hacker to use password reset requests to access your accounts.

In a prior blog post, we cautioned about using simple, easy-to-hack passwords and recommended using a password manager to provide an additional layer of security. But Mat Honan’s experience proves that having strong passwords is not enough. As online & cloud service become more mainstream, security concerns will likely take center stage.

The consensus seems to be that Microsoft’s “re-imagining” of Windows was the right … some say only … thing for Microsoft to do in order to remain competitive in today’s world of mobile technologies and consumerization of I.T.

With Windows 8, Microsoft is countering the rapid rise of Apple & Google by offering a consistent Windows experience across all their devices, whether a user is on a PC, tablet or phone. This is a differentiated, and some say risky, strategy from Apple’s strategy of maintaining distinctly separate operating systems for their mobile and desktop devices.

Windows 8 was designed first, and foremost, as a touch-based operating system, and has received uniformly positive reviews in testing on mobile devices – phones & tablets. But opinion is a bit more divided when it comes to using Windows 8 on non-touch-enabled devices.

Echoing the opinion of several bloggers who follow the tech industry, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes summarizes his Windows 8 experience in a recent ZDNet article in one word: “awful.“

Kingsley-Hughes goes on to say  that “despite being rock-solid, snappy and responsive, as a platform to do real-world work on, Windows 8 feels utterly unusable, and that’s down to one thing — the “Metro UI” user interface.”

First, the familiar Start button is no longer there and the “Metro” UI from Windows Phone is now the primary user interface on the desktop. Large touch tiles are fine for tablets and phones, but seem to be less efficient for mouse & keyboard.

Many newer apps will sport the new “Metro” UI, but the legacy apps that Microsoft is counting on to bring consumers over to their platform will use the traditional Windows interface. Microsoft has tried to optimize the Microsoft Office ribbon for touch, but has failed to “re-imagine” Office in the same way they have Windows.

Switching between a traditional Windows user interface and the more modern “Metro” interface may confuse many users, and lengthen the leaning curve for those using Windows 8. At minimum, it won’t provide the elegant user experience consumers have become used to with Apple’s – some would argue Google’s as well – products.

Another annoyance Kingsley-Hughes highlights is what he calls “mystery meat navigation, where you’re really not sure what anything is or what it does.” He says that while Microsoft has added a lot of good new features, they have also moved the familiar ones around and it’s not clear where or how to access any of them.

Kingsley-Hughes closes his thoughts by saying “There’s a palpable fear that Windows 8 will stumble out of the door. I’m hearing this from people within Microsoft, from the OEMs and vendors, and from others in and around the industry. The OEMs and vendors feel especially vulnerable, and if Windows 8 does become ‘another Vista’ then there will be an industry-wide bloodbath.”

Have you used the Consumer Preview of Windows 8? Tell us about your experiences and whether you think Windows 8 will be a success or a disaster.

According to Ellen Messmer on CIO.com, a survey commissioned by Xigo with research performed by CCMI noted “two-thirds of respondents who allow BYOD in their organizations said that their mobile capex hasn’t changed — and nearly a quarter (24%) said mobile capex had actually increased by more than 20%.”

So why aren’t costs going down for many companies after they have implemented a BYOD policy?

Messmer reports “one reason is that mixing corporate-liable and BYOD policies could have the impact of negating carriers’ volume-pricing discounts.  Plus, if companies have agreed to pick up the tab for BYOD, they may find employees use multiple mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets.”

Another factor impacting the cost of a BYOD program is the cost of the company help desk.  If you don’t properly plan for the operational support of multiple devices, you may actually end up spending more for support than in a non-BYOD environment, as was the case in 28% of those surveyed.

If you are still part of the 60% of the corporate population that does not yet endorse BYOD, you may still benefit from implementing a BOYD policy in your company. In order to ensure costs do not get out of hand, make sure you have an operations support plan ready to implement and make sure your BYOD policy is documented and communicated.

BYOD is inevitable, so if you don’t endorse it yet or if you don’t have a policy yet, start planning for it.  Plan properly for all the areas of the end-user experience that will be affected and make sure you understand all the related cost and support components.

Image By HLundgaard (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons http://bit.ly/QGsDLh

Cromwell Schubarth reports, in the Nashville Business Journal, that according to the study, 70 percent of the Fortune 500 CEOs have zero presence on social media.

Most surprising was the lack of engagement on LinkedIn, the social network targeted at the business community. Cromwell says that only 26 percent of this group use LinkedIn, and of that group, only 36 percent have only one connection, and only 10 percent have at least 500 connections.

With social media becoming such an integral part of our social fabric, why don’t executives of major corporations utilize social media to their advantage? Well there are many reasons, the most common being:

• they don’t have time for social media
• mistakes are magnified
• social media can seem overwhelming
• the risk of sharing the wrong or incorrect information
• lack of familiarity with how to use social media
• feeling they are “too old” for social media

So are these CEOs doing the right thing by avoiding social media? There are some potentially valid concerns:

• Does a large, successful corporation really need social media to grow its business?
• Does a large percentage of their customers really rely on social media to guide their buying decisions?
• Is there a substantial risk of publicly traded companies tweeting misunderstood or misinterpreted information?

Josh James, founder and CEO of Domo, writing for Forbes.com says “Social media isn’t a passing fad. The primary reason you have to be social is because that is where your customer lives. Even if you are not leveraging it to close business and interact with your customers, you have to spend enough time online to at least understand the shift in the world.”

He goes on to say “There’s no denying that sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are now part of the daily fabric of life. CEOs have a responsibility to their shareholders to be visible. CEOs who shun social media risk losing touch with some of their most lucrative customers, prospects and influencers.”

Many smaller companies are using social media as a tool to communicate with customers and potential customers, engage their employees, and champion innovation. Larger companies that fail to understand the shift in communications that are becoming commonplace in today’s business world may risk being “out-innovated” by their smaller, more nimbler competitors.

Read the official press release from the Domo research here.

Yes, Microsoft’s announcement about their latest PCs, Microsoft Surface, was the talkoff the tech community, including Apple-like secrecy and hype.

In an attempt to gain Apple-like buzz, Microsoft has developed their own hardware in secret, sent out cryptic invitations to the press for the unveiling, and declined to reveal the actual venue of the reveal until just hours before the event. And it worked . . . every blogger and analyst has weighed in on their opinion of Microsoft’s Surface PCs.

Most interesting were the numerous “hands on” reviews from attendees of the event, who really stretched the meaning of the term “hands on”.  Turns out that those doing the “hands on” reviews DID get to touch the new devices, but that’s about it. The devices they were allowed to handle were turned off, and those amazing keyboards-in-a-cover that everyone was raving about, well the “hands on” for those were limited to keyboards that were not attached to working devices.

Says Danny Sullivan, writing for Marketing Land,  ”No journalist seems to have really used any of these at the launch event. None of the hands-on reviews that I’ve read, having been in that room and toured the stations, have anything that reflects any real hands-on activity to me. There’s plenty of careful photography that can give the impression that hands-on was going on.”

It’s obvious that the devices shown were prototypes, not nearly ready for prime time, and Microsoft said they will be releases along with Windows 8, estimated for release in October/November of this year.

So why the early announcement?

Some analysts think this is a classic Microsoft strategy, pre-announce an unreleased product and attempt to freeze the market until the product is released. Most analysts believe that this strategy won’t work with consumers interested in tablets like the iPad, so who were they targeting this announcement?

David Morgenstern, writing for ZDNet,  says that “by announcing the devices well in advance, Microsoft hopes to stop the market for the iPad and MacBook in the enterprise market”.

The theory is that if Microsoft can provide I.T. departments and CIOs a user-friendly tablet with a keyboard, and include the security and management tools that they are already familiar with using to manage their exsiting PCs, enterprise buyers will hold off on iPad purchases and this will stop the iPad’s momentum in the enterprise and provide an opportunity for Microsoft to stem the tide of the BYOD movement.

It’s an interesting theory, but Microsoft’s inability to demo working units with compelling applications for the enterprise may backfire and result in their losing the buzz that they so carefully crafted. Assuming they are able to release the Surface PC in conjunction with the release of Windows 8, four to five months will seem like a lifetime and there will likely be new announcements from Apple and Google that will feed the hype machine.

According to security experts, 6.5 millions LinkedIn users had their passwords compromised, as did 1.5 million eHarmony subscribers and an estimated 17.3 million Last.fm users.

While the damage to users of those services seems to be limited, a bigger risk is still out there as many people use the same password on multiple sites, and those 25+ million passwords that were compromised from LinkedIn, eHarmony and Last.fm are likely used on other sites as well.

This is a wake-up call to all of us and requires a more sophisticated management of our online passwords and identities. Security experts agree that it’s virtually impossible to stop hackers from gaining access to passwords when they are determined to do so, and the responsibility is on each of us to minimize our risk.

Dave Johnson, writing for CBS MoneyWatch,  sums up the advice from many security experts, recommending that you make your passwords stronger, make them unique and unrelated to you personally, and make different passwords for each website you log on to.

All are good recommendations, but they are virtually impossible to implement without keeping track of all of your passwords. And if you keep track by writing them down, you’re just asking for trouble.

So what to do? The best way to keep your passwords strong, secure and unique is by using a password manager.

Password managers keep track of all of your passwords and can generate longer, more complex passwords that are more difficult to decipher.

The best ones integrate directly with your browser and allow automatic logon to  your web sites after you have entered your master password, eliminating the need to remember all of your different passwords. Some also synchronize to their mobile app, offering the same convenience on your mobile phones & tablets.

There are many password managers on the market, and Serdar Yegulalp, writing for InfoWorld, reviews seven of them, recommending 1Password and  KeePass as “the best of the bunch.”  Both are cross-platform, working on Windows, Mac OS X, iOS and Android.

Using a password manager on your desktop and all of your mobile devices is the best way to ensure that you have complex, unique passwords for all of your website registrations, while avoiding the need to memorize them or write them down. Improve your online security by installing and using the password manager that works for you.

(Photo courtesy Ron Bennetts http://bit.ly/L47xZA)