AT&T: Biz tablet adoption triples; upgrades Toggle platform

AT&T has several reasons to pay more serious and devoted attention to its mobile enterprise customers.

For starters, the nation's second largest mobile provider reported on Wednesday that it has seenbusiness customer tablet adoption triple in one year. More precisely, that's a 194 percent increase between Q1 2011 and Q1 2012.

Furthermore, over 27,000 AT&T business customers have adopted mobile applications, and AT&T is reporting that it is closing more than five mobile device management corporate deals on average per business day.

So AT&T is responding in a few ways. First of all, it is touting its Mobile Enterprise Applications Platform (MEAP).

Revenue for MEAP has also already more than tripled during 2011, and 50 percent of MEAP customers are reportedly purchasing additional software or professional services from AT&T to build out more mobile solutions. Some of these customers include power management company Eaton and the State of Michigan's Department of National Resources.

AT&T is pointing specifically towards energy, utility, and healthcare customers because these industries are most typically looking to upgrade outdated systems with more cloud-based, mobile, next-generation solutions.

Finally, AT&T is also giving a boost to Toggle, which essentially enables mobile users to have two phones (one for work and one for personal use) on a single smartphone or tablet. That is, Toggle sets up a barrier with encryption of business data on employees' mobile devices, creating a distinct work mode apart from personal mode.

The biggest add-on is ToggleHub, which gives IT departments more control over organizing and managing corporate apps and media in a single, customized content manager.

The latest version of AT&T Toggle is supposed to be supported by "virtually any service provider" and can run on smartphones and tablets "running the major mobile operating systems," including Android 2.2 to 3.X-based devices.