Tablets

[neXus]

Even with good apps, the apps are individual, they do not speak to one another and never will.  There are fantastic file management apps, fantastic office apps.  Unfortunately there are no apps provide particular solutions unless you have one developed.  if your company is some major pharmaceutical with inhouse development for an inhouse purchasing/stock management/CRM system, great, your in luck. 

We've trailed Ipads for a group of Surveyors that are trying to go paperless.  Instead of making a dictation, e-mailing the dictation to the office for typing up.  They want to be able create the report, onsite, on a template.  Then VPN in to the specific secure file share via 3G/Wifi and increase the number of surveys.

Unfortunately, I have not found one app that that can let me work on a Onenote/Excel/Word file and then take it from the storage of that and use a file explorer type app through use of a VPN Connection and AD authentication.

......I have found individual broken apps.

Not sure how you have been using them. We at work have used ipads which have sat there recorded audio and the app when ran tries to convert that into text. We set that running before heading back to our office and when its finished it emails the account you set. By the time we get into work it has been there in the email box ready for correcting and putting the notes into our basecamp.

purchasing/stock management/CRM system - Website, the Adobe CMS we use does this very well and online purchasing, CRM, Stock management are where many software is heading.
Saying that, checking my phone now, while a lot of them will be trash as always there are a number of apps saying they do that and one or two will be good.

Dropbox on my iphone lets me put pictures, move things around and when you set apps up into itunes correct can hold and share files just fine. One of the bigger downsides for me with the ipad in terms of business is the need for itunes still. Apple could do with developing a dedicated sync app for business.