Trialling it in large enterprise - 10,000 users (blue & white collar)
We're trialling it as part of two separate pilot projects. We are an organisation of about 25,000 employees in various industry sectors such as mining, engineering, construction and maintenance, manufacturing and consulting.
The first was an IT initiative to try and stay ahead of the wave of Exec requests and users bringing their own. We got caught with the iPhone that way and now it's a fully supported device in what was previously a large Blackberry shop (1000 devices). After the first 4 weeks the execs won't give them back, CFOs included. Apple is aware of this and their Enterprise team gives us regular briefings and even though I expected the iPhone and iPad to be gaining traction in the enterprise I'm astounded with each briefing at the size and velocity of the uptake. As one post stated - you can't stop it - you just have to try and stay ahead of the wave to best control it from a support perspective. The other strategy/benefit is that it's winning kudos for IT because we're bringing it to the table instead of the other way around.
My team is running a second pilot in the field with technicians for installation/maintenance of subscription TV services contractors. We're also trialling a few netbooks but I fully expect that the iPad will be the choice. In this environment battery life is king, the battery life is up to 3 times longer on the iPad than the netbooks and it also has a touch interface which is far better in the field than a trackpad or similar pointing device. Further as we've discovered through our surveys and feedback and research, the technician community is already used to the iPhone interface - 66% have chosen that as their smartphone of choice, with about 20% choosing Nokia, and then the also rest. Again we were surprised by that uptake.
Guys this is real world data - Apple in business and the enterprise - unheard of a couple years back. And to hear the Apple Enterprise team is like being in a dream - am I really hearing this from APPLE! And the most damning evidence from Microsoft's Mobile Head in our region - "we lost out to the iPhone, consumer is king, we're not listening to CIOs and IT anymore when it comes to mobile devices".
