Sourcing Speak

I just got my new iPad and within a few hours, I was hooked on my new toy. After watching Letterman, I was thankful to learn I was in good company with my new addiction. When someone suggested I sync my tablet with my work email account, I wondered why would I want to pollute my fun. I finally relented, and once I began sending and receiving my business email, I realized entire nights and weekends passed without my needing to boot up my laptop. I could rely solely on my iPad for certain business purposes, and it appears I am not alone in this revelation. The ipad has become more than a toy for certain businesses and as Deloitte predicts more than 25 percent of all tablet computers will be bought by enterprises in 2011, and that number is likely to rise in 2012 and beyond. With those figures, could the iPad replace the business laptop?

As the Deloitte article points out, there are concerns around security, the cost of support, and price, but as iPad use continues to grow – and it will – support costs very well may go down. The average cost of laptop support for an enterprise is $20 to $25 per month. If we assume the cost to support an iPad is roughly similar to the cost to support a blackberry (i.e., $6 per month) that translates to significant savings to support an iPad over a laptop. For example, an enterprise with 30,000 end users would spend roughly $7.92M per year (assuming an average of $22 per month) in laptop support, but the same enterprise would spend only $2.16M in iPad support. This delta amounts to $5.76M savings per annum. With these savings, the cost to purchase the iPad devices (at approximately $600 each) would be entirely recouped in a little over 3 years. In this light, the iPad is most definitely more than a toy – instead, it could be employed as a potential cost saving strategy for certain enterprise users.

As it stands now, certain large international financial institutions are requiring their executives to travel with an iPad as the portability, battery life, and mobile internet connection make supporting such executive more efficient. Executives can easily receive, download, and project last minute updates to board presentations. Companies are also giving their mobile workforce CRM and other corporate systems designed for tablets. For example, some pharmaceutical companies are providing sales representatives with tablets.

Following unprecedented back-and-forth with representatives from various governments, the ICANN board announced its plan to approve the new generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) program at a special session to be held on June 20, 2011, at the ICANN meeting in Singapore.

The approval of the gTLD program and the associated Guidebook assumes the release of an updated version of the currently 312-page Guidebook for a month of public comment on April 15, 2011. ICANN has also released a draft timeline of dates based on the current plan.

Assuming these new dates stick, the application period for new gTLDs could begin at the end of October. Many potential applicants have kept their plans on hold pending more definitive timelines, but now is likely the time to start the process in earnest.

Beginning later this year, ICANN is expected to accept applications for new generic domain suffixes for industries, interests and communities, such as “.bank,” “.movie” or “.music.” In addition to the generic terms, this round also includes the potential for various geographic tags that are not country codes (e.g., “.nyc” or “.andes”), brands (“.pillsbury”) as well as non-Latin characters (e.g., “中 国”). ICANN is expecting to approve between 200 and 500 new gTLDs in this round and to have new application rounds approximately every two years.

For more information, please see the Pillsbury Client Alert.

In a speech on economic development in January this year, UK Prime Minister David Cameron addressed the need to develop businesses in sectors that will be key to the UK’s economic future. The government’s plans to foster development include direct changes to government procurement practices to foster contract awards to innovators.

The Prime Minister acknowledged a tendency for government agencies to take the safe path, passing over well qualified smaller companies in favour of the big service providers. For years it was said “Nobody gets fired for buying IBM”. In government circles it seems the same could be said for entrenched service providers like Accenture and Capita (see Cameron’s speech on Government Procurement from February this year).

Now, all government departments are being urged to consider smaller, regional suppliers of goods and services. The Government’s goal is to award 25% of contracts to small and medium enterprises (SMEs). This echoes Cameron’s pre-election opinion that public procurement needs to move towards “a culture that’s a little bit more experimental and is prepared to take a bit of a leap sometimes with a small organization.” This includes ensuring that businesses that are “inventive and doing exciting things” win contracts to supply services to government, rather than simply awarding work to “the big players.”