Tablet love in the enterprise – Microstrategy loves Ipads

2,300 iPads at its $454 million software firm. Soon after MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor saw his first iPad in April 2010, the company gave its entire sales force the tablets, replacing Windows laptops. The firm created iOS apps for customers, as well as employees. “The iPad is the ultimate information consumption device,” Dan Kerzner, senior vice president for mobile operations, recently said. Indeed, the company has reshaped itself into an iOS developer, producing tools allowing customers to create their own mobile iOS Business Intelligence apps. Internally, MicroStrategy created its own iOS app, the Corporate Request Center. Here, rather than stuck at a desk doing paperwork, employees with an iPad are freed to complete expense reports, file time-off requests or work on employee reviews anywhere. “In the past, all these would have to wait until I got back to my desk,” Hugh Owens, mobile marketing director at MicroStrategy, told Network World. “Now all these specific requests are in my app and I can see them and act on them any time of the day,” he said. Owens said he reads internal reports on his iPad before getting out of bed, running reports and checking upcoming activities while making breakfast. Although security in the past had made some enterprises question using an Apple iPad or iPhone, iOS is described as being “very adequate” for IT departments. At MicroStrategy, all iPads are locked-down with 256K AES encryption and passwords. After three minutes of inactivity, devices are automatically locked. The ability allows the company to provide differing levels of security to different devices. From CultofMac Important: This is the nightmare scenario for Microsoft because the more traction Apple gets in the Enterprise, the harder it is for Microsoft to fight back. I remember having debates with Microsoft employees where they would tell me that the Enterprise wouldn’t go for Ipads because they were:

• Toys
• Insecure
• Had no Enterprise Apps
• Hard to suppport
• Too expensive
• Hard to integrate

etc etc… Well, it’s 2011 and all those points have been exposed as pure bullshit nonsense. The Windows 8 Tablet team have to be focused like a laser on making their tablets competitive in the enterprise space. This involves hooks to Office 365, the Cloud (Azure), to Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 8, to the Windows 8 Desktop and to enterprise databases like SQL Server. Apple are raising the stakes and Microsoft have been put on notice…]]>