It is official the Apple iPad is here to stay, but the question is, are you ready to use and support it within your business?

With over 2 million iPads sold and used strictly in small businesses it seems that what was once thought of as a novelty item is actually finding its way into businesses across the country. So is the iPad coming to an office near you? Chances are they are already there as more and more software vendors are seeing the trend to develop applications for the iPad, small businesses are quickly jumping on board and using the iPad to track their business expenses, check stocks, remote connect and use in Cloud Apps such as SalesForce CRM. Typically, small business is the first to jump on new trending technology as it is easier to adapt to smaller networks and investment costs are lower than that of an enterprise company that has a tighter guidelines and would opt for customized applications to suit the needs of the business. For those businesses that don’t have a CoCoa developer in house the options are to purchase off the shelf software and adapt to it to fit your needs. Luckily, more and more vendors are quickly rushing to push apps out to the marketplace to aid these businesses.

Even though iPads are not equipped with large storage devices, (64gig max) you are seeing a trend to push and store more data to the cloud which makes for better collaboration, syncing, storage, and file access. With that, even storage on the iPad is adequate as you really will not find many users needed much more storage than what the iPad is offering especially if they are strictly using it for business related services, meaning no movies, MP3’s or home photos. I am yet to come across a user that has achieved more than 5gigs of spreadsheet and documents in my 12 years as an IT professional.

With the theme of the 2010 CES show being that of tablets and slates I think Apple has it right in pushing the idea of an ultra compact and lightweight tool such as the iPad. You will start to see a slew of new slates coming over the next couple of months in many different flavors of operating systems, from slimmed down versions of windows7 to Google’s Android II. However for now Apple has been first to market with the iPad and we will see if they are able to hold that top seat in the future…..

If you would like a list of top 20 apps for the iPad click here courtesy of businessinsider.com