“2011 is going to be a big experimentation year,” Ted Schadler, a principal analyst at Forrester Research who studies collaboration tools and team productivity, tells NextGov when it comes to tablets and the mobile workforce.

Consulting firm Deloitte agrees. In a report released last month, Deloitte predicts this it the year the iPad will make the leap from consumer driven to enterprise tool.

One possible fly in the ointment to slow that progress is how much data the tablets can hold. However, Eric Openshaw, vice chairman and U.S. technology leader at Deloitte told the Dorobek Insider, at agencies where email and document storage have moved to the cloud, the iPad offers an opportunity to replace computers, Openshaw said.

A bonus that comes with storage on the cloud is being able to share applications.

“Being able to source applications on demand,” Jeff Bergeron, the U.S. Public Sector Chief Technology Officer for HP explained to the Federal Drive, “in a mobile environment is certainly critical, so we’ll see the explosion of mobile and mobile workforce and mobile devices within the public sector market as cloud becomes more of a reality.”

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