Surprise: enterprises pushing for netbooks
Netbooks are those cute little laptops that we’ve come to love so much. We must because we’re buying them in record numbers and everybody is entering the market, except Apple. One thing we say often about netbooks is that they meet the needs of a lot of different user types. They are wonderful travel companions due to their small and light footprint, they can do email and web stuff well and they are fairly capable devices for a laptop so cheap. This leads to the question- would netbooks survive in the enterprise?
I had an interesting conversation with someone in the industry who is in a position to know about such things. He’s asked me to not divulge his identity nor who he works for as it’s not something they want up for public discussion. Something was stated in this conversation that surprised me- enterprise customers are pushing OEMs to produce netbooks for them. The reasoning is given that netbooks can do the bulk of what the enterprises need their workers to do and given the low cost compared to alternatives they seriously want to bring netbooks in the door.
This is not something that we’d normally expect to hear as netbooks are aimed at the “casual” computer user who needs a companion device for the home. Road warriors have been vocal about the benefits of netbooks while on the road so perhaps we shouldn’t be so surprised that savvy enterprises realize they meet the needs of some of their workers. I would imagine that the appeal of a cheap laptop for their workers who travel a lot might be growing as they see netbooks that have a lot of capability inside.
So what kind of netbook do you think would appeal to the enterprise market? Is Windows XP good enough for the enterprise? Truth is it’s probably preferred over Vista since many enterprises have refused to upgrade to Vista internally. Would the enterprise netbook need gobs of memory, faster processors, what? It’s important to remember that adding capabilities to netbooks always results in higher cost and that’s probably not a good thing, although the enterprise might be willing to bear that extra cost. Corporate netbooks would likely still be cheaper than the full-blown laptops they are buying now so who knows? We’re interested in your thoughts on the prospect of an enterprise netbook, especially if you work in such an environment.
I think some enterprise customers may be looking at netbooks as alternatives not so much for normal laptops, but as replacements for Pricey Sub notebooks like Sony Viao T series, etc.
Net books may give them an additional option between a standard notebook, which is usually a 14″-15″ and is usually quiet bulky and has dismal battery life or a Sub notebook which while being lighter and having longer battery lifer is quiet expensive.
With Netbooks, you can give them to those people who don’t really need power or versatility but need the smaller size, reserving the Sub notebooks for the ones who really need all the features.
The best thing about netbooks if you are in a enterprise environment is Citrix.
My company has a Citrix Presentation server set up and I have tested several netbooks and they work amazing with this solution.
They are basically notebook thin clients.
Larry
With the way the economy is doing, there is no better time for netbooks for business. I think a lot of startups and cost cutting firms could easily transition to netbooks instead of costlier ultraportables. Netbooks have some advantages like the availability of cheap, robust SSD storage that often comes standard, unlike on ultraportables which are often too expensive.
I know a few VPs of a very large company that have Mini 9s. They use netbooks for their size while traveling. The VPs that are using them can order anything they want and normally walk around with 3k plus ultraportables with 4 gb of RAM and 128 GB SSDs. Yet they choose the Mini 9 for some reason on short trips.
Vista would definitely be an operating system of choice. The improvements in Battery life warrant the use of Vista. In addition, the OS seems to work surprisingly well even with 1GB RAM. With the introduction of SP2 the OS will only improve.
A Netbook like the samsung NC10 with some docking solution would IMO suit 90% of users everywhere be they enterprise or otherwise.
The vast bulk of modern computer users rarely venture beyond the browser and office applications
When I ran an IT department, the executives were always begging me for smaller, lighter notebooks. Some of them used their phones, but they wanted something really easy to carry and not too big. Most executive users only need email and browsing and a lot of them find the Blackberry a little too limiting when they travel.
Consultants who move around to different clients and who may use client computers, still need notebooks for carrying reference data and stuff related to their own companies. I worked for a consulting company for a while that would have found netbooks to be a perfect solution.
not surprised one bit. and this is why some of the big names was late to market. this basically undermines the point of the 12″ ultraportables that they have so happily been supplying to the business grade customers.
i swear, most computers used on offices are just terminals to the mail and calender server, and maybe the ability to type up a letter or memo (word-processor/typewriter)…
We bought a netbook for travelling. At home we can plug a full-sized USB keyboard into it, and connect video to an LCD monitor. For a vast majority of what we do, it’s fine!
I still don’t understand the difference between an “enterprise” computer (n*book or otherwise) and a “consumer” computer. You buy the computer that fits your needs. I can’t imagine that many “enterprise” folks use more than the general office and internet programs, and of course a netbook is suitable for that. Of course, if you need a more powerful computer for some specific reason, then you get that.
How can an “enterprise” netbook (or otherwise) be any different than a “normal” netbook??
Netbooks are certainly useful for many people working in the corporate world.
However, if you happen to be working in the finance industry then it might be slightly underpowered if you have to work with massive excel spreadsheets
XP, while being the OS of choice at the moment and for most of 2009, will definitely be on the way out for netbooks. Win7 will be a much better alternative when it is released next year, and with Intel’s Pineview solution being released early next year as well (coinciding with the HP 2133 refresh I must add) the enterprise will be a fast-growing segment for netbook sales next year.
Eventually Medfield will enter the market in 2010, pushing performance even further. Win7 on a Medfield netbook will be the killer combination to look out for.
@ the post by Ben:
The classification of a device as enterprise or consumer often doesn’t have anything to do with the power of the device. Rather it usually refers to the support models that are put in place for the device. For example, my company uses Dell servers, desktops and mobile devices. When Dell classifies a device as enterprise it means that they will provide a higher level of support for it. They strategically place and stock enterprise parts warehouses around the country so that they can deliver the parts to you within the time specified in your support contract. Often they can have a replacement part to you within 4 hours (and always within 24 hours). Consumer products most often don’t provide that same level of response.
Also with Dell enterprise products they have a guarantee that they will manufacture and sell the exact model for a minimum of 18 months. This is important to corporate IT departments because they do not want to have spend resources to constantly update their OS images and driver sets to accommodate changing models. They are guaranteed that they will be able to purchase the exact same device for at least that time period (and usually longer). Consumer products do not have have this same guarantee, a certain model can be here then gone within a couple months, and often can contain different hardware components from one day to the next.
These same points would apply to netbooks that are classified as enterprise. A couple of us techs at my site are now evaluating different netbook makes and models in order to determine if they could be a possible solution for deployment within our enterprise. We have actually setup a forum at http://www.netbookinsider.com in order to discuss the different makes/models/options that we are considering. We invite everyone to stop to stop by and share their thoughts, opinions and findings with us, as it will help us in making a determination on what solution we will present to our Enterprise Technology committee, while all the while developing into a netbook resource for general users (hope that isn’t too spammy).