Salesforce Mobile: Salesforce.com meets the iPad

When Apple launched its much-anticipated iPad device on April 3, not every company in enterprise IT was poised to take advantage of the new platform.

That's a shame because with Apple saying it had sold 500,000 iPads during their first week of availability in the US, it represents tremendous opportunity for the first enterprise tech providers to this space. (Apple has now reported 1 million sold in the first 28 days.)

Here's why Apple's new iPad is a great mobile device for business applications:

It's light, it has battery life of more than 12 hours even when used as much as a laptop, it's got a bright display and it's a fast, snappy device based on the iPhone operating system and Apple's proprietary A4 processor. With basic Wi-Fi configuration, it supports Microsoft Exchange out of the box, has superior contact and calendaring interfaces and provides what amounts to instant-on and instant-off capabilities--either by putting it into "sleep" mode or just turning it off and on. The Transportation Safety Administration allows iPads to be carried through airport security checkpoints without having to remove them from the bag (a big advantage over laptops).

The problem is that while the iPad has been designed in a way that would be great for business use, the ecosystem hasn't been as aggressive as it could be in developing business apps. To be sure, several good business apps are available for iPad, including Exchange, Citrix software that provides for remote desktop service, and some nice productivity apps such as FileMaker's Bento. But Salesforce.com, the company that provides cloud-based CRM solutions, has been among the earliest providers of mobile enterprise solutions and, when the iPad was launched, it was already in solid position.