Happy Friday, everyone! I don’t know about the rest of you, but we at Matrix42 had a very busy week. Why, you ask? Well in case you missed it, we were named a Visionary in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Client Management Tools and we announced SP2 of Empirum V14 at CeBIT this week. Pretty exciting stuff, if you ask me. Besides our own news, we’d like to direct your attention to other topics of interest from the tech world this week.

I’m sure most of you heard about Apple’s announcement for ‘the new iPad’ this week, but did you know that industry analysts have already looked at how enterprise environments can benefit from the product upgrades?  In an article on CIO, Derek du Preez reports on some of the technical updates and newly introduced functions can benefit users. For example, the ‘retina display’ may appear superficial for enterprise use, Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi says it may be a useful improvement, as many of the iPads initially deployed are given to Sales and Marketing employees. The new iPad is said to have a faster connection, more power on the touchscreen and the ability to handle more business workloads – including graphics, video and browser apps – but are you convinced it’s necessary? Do you think your company will be purchasing new iPads for enterprise use just yet?

As we mentioned in a round-up post a couple weeks ago, mobile technology trends have begun making moves to the federal government sector. Taking it a step further, Federal Computer Week reporter John Moore reports that the Navy will deploy a 7,500-seat virtual desktop initiative, in which desktop images will be streamed from regional data centers to zero clients. Why? “Ease of administration and enhanced security continue to motivate technology adopters and keep desktop virtualization on the IT map,” said Moore; this project will help to simplify administration, reduce support costs and enhance security. From potential challenges to constructive advice, this article provides insight into how the Navy can benefit from desktop virtualization and – perhaps down the road – BYOD. For other stories on the consumerization of IT and its effects on businesses, check out InfoWorld’s Spring 2012 Digital Spotlight.

Well that about does it for this week’s installment. Have a great weekend, all!