As Apple officially opens up its US store for pre-orders on the IPad this morning, its time to revisit the touch screen interface and see where we can make use of it corporately.

While many business won’t see much value in the IPad, there are numerous markets that could potentially benefit from a portable/touch screen interface.  While the tablet form factor is certainly not new (IBM, HP) it has always been a compromise between a laptop and the tablet.

About 5 years ago I had one of the first Windows tablets.  Even with great hand writing recognition, note taking etc, I was unable to effectively use the device as my primary desktop.  At the time it was mostly because of the screen orientation and size, but the novelty quickly wore off and the limitations put an end to that experiment.  Two years ago when I replaced my home laptop, I went with the IBM X61 which proved to be a much more effective replacement.  I’ve lugged the unit to meetings and conferences alike.  The handwriting and note taking interfaces are vast improvements and it is so nice to be able to take notes during a meeting or interview and send them off within minutes of the interview being over.  I also found that during interviews, the fact that I wasn’t typing allowed the individual across the table to feel more comfortable about the process.  Typing interview notes on a keyboard with the screen up on a laptop just seems to create a barrier between people.  And this is the market we all need to pay attention to.

Anyone with front line staff who need to interview people, be that HR, sales and marketing, the triage nurse or doctor at the local clinic etc, this is the ultimate target market for these devices.  While I don’t have high hopes that the IPad will have spectacular apps to do this any time soon, many of the X86 compatible tablets running Windows 7 can do that easily today.  Pair these tablet devices up with your favorite applications presentation server (VMware View, Citrix XenApps), and you have a perfect device for information gathering.  Especially since most of these devices are being targeted at the sub $500 market.  Heck most smart phones cost more than that.

The other market that we all have internally is the ebook/document review market.  While deploying 100 tablets across your organization to save on printing costs doesn’t make sense, I do have to admit that I spend a lot of time reading documents on my Sony PRS-505 ebook reader.  There is just something about not having to lug 5 kilos of paper around on a flight.  With Apple’s announcement that the ITunes store will sell ebooks, we can expect an easy way to sync documents with the device.  Probably a drop in folder similar to what ITunes does today for MP3 files.  Imaging dropping your latest financial reports etc into a folder and having it automatically sync with your IPad?  That would the the ultimate interface for document review.

So while for most of us, the IPad will be just a larger IPhone/IPod device to play our music, games and movies, there are genuine reasons to consider the device in the larger corporate environment.  Don’t consider it a replacement, but something that augments today’s computing experience by targeting niche needs.  And at less than $500 per device, there just might be a business case out there.