A funny moment happened to me while traveling in the UK a few weeks back.   I was at a bar and had my iPad out to catch up on e-mail which piled up during my trip.   Two gentlemen sat down next to me.  One had an iPhone and was reading something on it.   One gentleman looked at me, then to the other with the iPhone and said, “You know, his is bigger”.

It’s true that many view the iPad as a much bigger version of the iPhone and iPod Touch.  However, its capabilities extend beyond what one might think of with the iPad’s smaller cousins.  For instance, a colleague of mine, who travels at least a week out of every month, has begun an experiment to see if he can use his iPad as his primary device instead of his laptop.  I’m not sure if I’m personally ready to cut the cord completely from my own laptop, but there are definitely cases where my iPad can fill some business critical roles:

• E-mail:  I’ve got my iPad hooked up to Exchange and have found it to be the ultimate tool for catching up on e-mail while on the road.   The larger screen real estate makes it easier to scan through long e-mails and, when in landscape mode, I find that I can type responses almost as quickly as on my laptop.   Would I want to write a 30 page essay?   Probably not without a real keyboard.  But, e-mails aren’t the place for long diatribes anyway.
• Content Consumption:  The mobility world is consistently changing, so it’s important to keep up with the latest events.  The iPad is tremendous for reading everything from Requests for Proposal (RFPs) and other corporate docs to articles from the web.   And while this point is often made, I find the form factor of the iPad to be one of its most powerful features:  While I can read on my laptop, the iPad is easier as I can lie down with it on a couch and actually read in portrait mode like I’m viewing a magazine.  
• Apps:  The last time I checked on my iPad, there were over 700 apps available in the “Business” category of the App Store.  Many of these apps are great; I routinely use the WebEx app while on the road and have found it really powerful to use the iPad as a simple, digital whiteboard to outline a quick concept with customers or peers.  Ultimately, I think the iPad will prove a strong form factor for enterprises to build their own line-of-business apps on as well.  We’ve seen tremendous interest in this from our customers and it’s only a matter of time before the enterprise application floodgate opens for the iPad.

These are just a few of the ways I find the iPad taking a role in my business life.  But, the iPad takes a role in my personal life as well, whether it is for gaming, movies or simply for catching up on a book or magazine. 

So, what does this mean?   Whether you’re using the iPad as your primary computing device or whether it occupies a strong role in your business toolkit, the challenges IT has in managing the iPad will mirror those of the iPhone.   iPads will have a dual-personality and, likely, many will be employee-owned.  Enterprises will have to thus make it easy for users to get connected to the right resources while at the same time segmenting enterprise-owned data from personal-owned data.  

I was putting together a YouTube video on MobileIron as I was thinking about these things.  With iOS 4 for iPad on the horizon, it’s going to be much easier to secure and provision all the iOS devices.  You can check out the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTrQ-fMfJDs

A social contract is an ”agreement by the governed on a set of rules by which they are governed.” (thanks Wikipedia)

I have seen very few businesses where the social contract for smartphones, beyond BlackBerry, is clearly laid out and internalized by both employer and employee.  It’s almost always missing.  I hear that policies are in place, but if they are not understood and accepted by the employee, then for all intents and purposes, they don’t exist.

This notion of the ”missing social contract” for mobility was a great turn of phrase I heard from an security guy the other day.  We’ve always said mobile is “different” when talking to IT teams trying to plan their smartphone strategies as an extension to what they did with laptops.  People assume that difference is because of fragmented operating systems, or the move to apps.  However, the most radical departure from the traditional IT mindset has nothing to do with mobile technology, but everything to do with human behavior.

End-users don’t view smartphones as “computing.”  They view them as a core enabler of daily life.  They don’t consider smartphones “hardware” and “software.”  They expect an integrated experience where they switch seamlessly from talking to texting, working to playing.  Form means as much, sometimes more, than function.  If they forget their laptop at work, they’ll pick it up the next day.  If they forget their phone at work, they’ll drive back 20 miles to get it.  It’s a lifeline that plays a much more important role in their daily existence than any other piece of corporate or personal technology.

As a result, they don’t operate under the default assumption that the social contract they have for their laptop applies to their phone.  IT has traditionally dictated form and function, use and policy.  If IT takes the same policy structure and guidelines as those used for laptops and desktops, and then applies them to a platform that the user views so differently, there will inevitably be a breakdown.  

So what should the Mobile Social Contract actually be?  Who should set it?  What should it cover?  What are the responsibilities of IT and of the user?  How should they be communicated?  What are the penalties for breaking the contract?  These are difficult questions to answer but I’m getting convinced that this is the missing link between good intention and user satisfaction in smartphone rollouts.