What happens when a successful and large company like semiconductor maker KLA-Tencor decides to give away iPads to all its employees? Well, it means the IT department is in trouble. After posting revenue of $1.8 billion, the CEO of the company gave each employee an iPad as a reward for the hard work; and not only did he gave people iPads, he also made sure the CIO of KLA-Tencor and IT folks would help everyone with the setup process. That leads to iTunes account creation, email setup, apps installation, secure VPN connections. For 5,400 iPads, that’s a bit of work.
KLA-Tencor’s Ballal didn’t have a choice about the speed and timing of an iPad rollout. The CEO had made a promise to give iPads to employees as a form of appreciation; when you promise someone an iPad, you can’t wait six months to deliver one.
So why couldn’t KLA-Tencor just ship the iPads to employees? Employees wanted the gadgets right away, even though half lived outside the United States. “The big thing was the logistics of getting these devices to different parts of the world,” Ballal says. “It was all the nightmare of shipping. The iPad wasn’t yet released in the different countries when we rolled this thing out. We learned a lot about logistics.
At its Q1 2011 earnings call, Apple announced over 80% of Fortune 500 are deploying or piloting iPads, and 88 of Fortune 100, 60% of Financial Times Europe testing or deploying iPhones. In the past we’ve seen school adopting iPads with special educational programs and corporate America “falling in love” with the device in a matter of months. [via TUAW]
