Tablets are immature when it comes to enterprise-level management, security and functionality, according to Paul DeBeasi, Research VP, Gartner.  At best, “tablets will augment, not replace, notebooks,” since tablets are “optimized for consumers of content, not creators of content,” he said at the recent New York Interop conference.

Chris Hazelton, Research Director, Mobile & Wireless at the 451 Group and ChangeWave Research, meanwhile, countered with August data showing that 16 percent of 1,618 corporations were providing tablets to employees — up from 4 percent in May 2010. In a market where IT spending is flat, that’s a significant amount, he said.

The debate over enterprise support of tablets and mobile devices continued on October 5, when the analysts squared off on the topic of whether your next notebook will be a tablet.

DeBeasi agreed that tablets are exciting and growing, and Gartner estimates that 300 million will be shipped by 2015. But tablet growth won’t be primarily in enterprises. The new paradigm, he said, will be a multidevice work model where users will select “the best device (smartphone, tablet, notebook) for the job.” The more important question is: “How do we synchronize our content and context among all of our devices?”

Additionally, DeBeasi said that technology is changing so rapidly that the endpoint devices of today, including tablets, phones and notebooks, won’t be the same in the future. “They are all morphing,” he said.

Hazelton agreed that the “form factors” may change, yet mobile apps are on the rise. At present, most business users employ tablets for checking email (70%), accessing the Internet (70%) and working away from the office (68%), but such uses as customer presentations (44%), sales support (43%) and tablets as replacements for laptops (36%), are gaining speed. Perhaps even more significantly, more than half of 505 businesses surveyed by ChangeWave in March said they will deploy two or more mobile apps in 2011.

While the debate attracted advocates on each side, to my mind, it’s not an either/or question-- each device will have a user base and each is optimal for a given application. Until device nirvana is reached—whatever form that may take-- the larger issue for enterprise IT is how to get through the interim period when multiple devices need support, service and funding. No one disagrees that short term management will be a challenge.

Read more about mobile device sessions at Interop here and more about Mobile-driven businesses here.