Lately, I have read a post on iPad usage in business. It showed that beyond email, web browsing and other productivity applications, some in-house applications can be developed for usage to manage sales forces, help vendors make orders OTA (over-the-air) and to streamline many business processes. Of course, those applications are not limited to the iPad and can be developed on other PC tablets and smartphones. But the focus here is the robustness of the iPad and it’s ability to cope with harsh conditions in business and industry.
The post I have read seemed limited and according to my opinion, it hasn’t presented how much the iPad is making our office time more profitable and enhances our efficiency and availability.
Let just talk about 2 usages that I think they have changed my life!
First usage: presentations and training
We all know about presentations during meetings or trainings. We plug a laptop to a video projector and then, thanks to a remote mouse, we run through different slides and even point “laser like” pointer on the screen to emphasize the focus on a certain region of the slide. This is really handy and helped trainers and presenters communicate better with their audience. But, when the trainer wants to switch to the application, he needs to sit down near the laptop and use the keyboard to type an URL or enter an information in a field. This can breakdown the attention of the audience and increase dead-times of the presentations. Imagine then what would be the impact on your audience if you can point, slide and even type text directly from your tablet. Even better, unless you have a screen in front of you (the one of your laptop), you will be tented to turn your back to your audience to see what they see on the projected screen. With an iPad and a remote desktop application, we have the screen “and” the audience together under almost the same direction 
.
Second usage: Ubiquity! Or the remote office
This time, I would like to show you how I really improved my efficiency and availability to my business. I deal with almost 30 labs around the world, from China to the USA, covering about 20 time zones. I travel most of the time and i have many phone meetings. And above all this, I’m the system owner of our new computerized Quality System. All this requires full availability to answer quality managers and end-users needs. What to do if I’m holidays, with my family drinking some fresh drinks on the pool? Amazingly, with an iPad connected through Wifi or 3G and a remote desktop application, I’m controlling my laptop that I left connected at home. VPN activated, i have no problem with confidentiality and with the remote desktop layer it is even more secured. I receive an email asking for an advanced configuration. It is immediately done! I let imagine how my business is appreciating my collaboration. And believe me, after this, my little son (7 months) called for food: it is done immediately .
Kidding apart, there would be no limit for imagination to enhance our availability at work as well as profiting from our free-time and having fun with family and friends.
In a future post, I will show how we can have OTA connection for iPad Wifi only. That way there will be no excuse to be absent!
