Editor’s Note: The following article is reprinted from Macworld UK. Visit Macworld UK’s blog page for the latest Mac news from across the Atlantic.
Microsoft is providing its reseller partners with material aimed at discouraging enterprise customers from adopting the iPad.
ZDNet got its hands on a copy of a presentation that outlines various strategies and themes resellers can push to persuade enterprise customers that Windows-based tablets are a better idea.
One slide questions how an enterprise could secure corporate intellectual property and mitigate against lost and stolen iPads. Another slide, titled “What customers are telling us about the iPad,” dismisses the iPad as “poor for data creation” and as having “limited enterprise manageability, security, hardware and support”.
However, this is by no means what all enterprise customers think of the iPad, with the device receiving praise for being very well suited for users that consume more content than they produce.
Research from ChangeWave published in November 2010 found that 14 percent of businesses it surveyed were planning to buy tablets in the first quarter of 2011, the vast majority plumping for the iPad.
The ChangeWave research also shows that Microsoft’s attempts to gain a hold in the enterprise tablet market could be stymied by RIM, which is planning to release its business-focused Playbook soon, as many respondents expressed an interest in this device.
Microsoft’s deck goes on to outline the benefits of Windows 7 slates—interestingly, and as the report notes, there is no mention of Windows 8—such as their support for a variety of peripherals.
It then suggests a number of points that could be used as a plan of action for approaching enterprise clients that are not already committed to the iPad, then strategies for approaching those that are.
Finally, the presentation then makes a point-by-point comparison of Windows 7 slates and the iPad, referring to issues such as the iPad’s lack of support for Flash and Silverlight, OS patch management tools and limited offline productivity.