As expected, Avaya announced yesterday that its “chameleon” video device is in fact … a tablet computer. And not surprisingly it runs Android OS (2.1 for the record). It is larger than Cisco’s previously announced Cius (11.6″ versus 7″). Both share a 1.6 GHz Intel Atom processors. I can go on, but for a rundown of the specs, see Network World‘s nice comparison table.
The hardware and OS are just the stage and props for the real act: the “Flare Experience,” which is Avaya’s voice, video, and data collaboration extravaganza. And based on the slickly prepared video presentation I saw, it is a nicely designed app that makes unified communications—as it’s called in the enterprise world—a working reality. An “A” to Avaya on this effort.
I didn’t see a live demo of Flare in the hands of a reviewer, so it’s hard to know what this is really like. Keep in mind that Android’s Froyo (their latest release) is, in the words of Google’s director of mobile products Hugo Barra, “not optimized for tablet use.”
Another fact to consider: The Flare is priced— for now anyway—at somewhere between $1500 – $2000. Cisco’s Cius is pegged at around $1000.
The real question for me is whether an independent market for enterprise-only Android tablets can grow and evolve in the onslaught of amazing consumer Android gadgets armed with scarily powerful Cortex A-8 processors (read Samsung Tab) and, of course, Apple’s iPad.
While trying out the impressive Samsung Galaxy S and the new Motorola Droid last month, Dr. Smartphone and I were force to conclude the obvious fact:it is hard to duplicate Apple’s iPhone.
Which is to say that Android OS and its apps are not as smooth, fluid, and integrated as they should be. Avaya appears to have gotten around these quirks with their Flare Experience, which is a complete unified communications environment, one which you presumably have in the foreground while in the office.
The biggest benefit to openness is the enormous and expanding universe of apps. It’s also a curse. No doubt there will soon be a can’t-live-without Android business app that will be a source of headaches for IT technicians trying to achieve a harmonious ecosystem on all those Flares and Ciuses that will surely make their way into corporate cubes.
This is precisely the reason for having a business appliance— legacy office phones and Blackberries—in which all the integration glitches have been worked out and firm-wired for you.
We don’t live in a world of static business telephony appliances anymore. This leads to one of my motifs: openness has an evil side.
I’m not a robotic Apple apologist by any standard, but there are tremendous advantages to having quality control over the apps and an all-seeing-intelligence (Apple) designing the hardware and OS.
While some consider a closed wall approach a chink in Apple’s armor, this works out to just what’s needed in a closed business world.
Even if we discount Apple’s business ambitions for the iPad (silly), consider this: it is hard to see why businesses, even large ones, would lock into a high-priced Android gadget from their PBX vendors when the consumer market offers less expensive and constantly improving wares.
The enterprise-only Android tablets will have a rough and uncertain ride.
Related articles by Zemanta
- Tablet Wars: Avaya Flare vs. Cisco Cius (networkworld.com)
- Afternoon in NYC with Galaxy, Droid, and iPhone (technoverseblog.com)
- Sizing Up Avaya And Cisco’s Business Tablets (blogs.forbes.com)
- Android Is Not “Optimized for Use on Tablets,” Says Google (bussinessinsider.com)
- Video: Intel Atom versus ARM Cortex A-9 (eetimes.com)
- Here Comes the First Wave of Android Tablets (businessinsider.com)
