“The majority of corporations has adopted iPads to some degree, but most are piloting the devices and/or allowing informal use by employees,” Galen Gruman reports for InfoWorld. “SAP is not one of those companies. The ERP giant was an early believer in the iPad concept and now has more than 12,500 in use — both those issued by the company and those brought in by employees. Even for a company as large as SAP, that’s a huge pool.”
“Within days of Apple announcing the iPad, SAP chairman Hasso Plattner told his executives — Bussmann in particular — that he believed the iPad would be a huge factor in business and SAP should be a first mover on the use of and support for the device,” Gruman reports. “This was before anyone actually had touched an iPad, when the reaction from most pundits — certainly most corporate and IT leaders — was that at best the new Apple device would be a media tablet (Gartner still calls it that, in fact) suited for watching videos and couch surfing; it would never be a business device.”
Gruman reports, “Today, SAP has more than 12,500 iPads at work across all departments and functions. Bussmann notes that for many employees, the iPad has largely replaced their laptops, though he believes it will be some years before tablets can completely substitute for the laptop of today.”
Much more in the full article here.
Bam!
And we’re back to Steve’s famous truck-car analogy. While there will be plenty of people out there who will continue buying trucks so that they can drive their kids to school, go shopping for groceries, drive to office and back, and go out in the evening on dates in a truck, vast majority of population will realise that having a massive, gas-guzzling, stiff-suspension, noisy truck when nothing one uses it for can’t be done in a much more comfortable, smaller, quiet, gas-sipping car makes no sense.
Just like there will always be trucks, so will there always be desktops (and laptops). We just won’t be using them nearly as much as we used to, and many people won’t really have any real need for them anyway.
Every household of today (in the developed world) has at least two computers. In a few years, it shouldn’t be surprising all but one of those computers get replaced by an iPad.
Couldn’t have said it better myself!
What’s up with SJ’s best friend at Oracle. I would have thought they could do the same as their competitor SAP.
Oracle is stuck in the 1990s internally. Its bloated, slow and a one trick pony. The only things interesting they have done recently have been to acquire other companies, that starts to become boring as you watch them fumble around and destroy the acquisition.
I’m honestly surprised to hear Steve and Larry were friends. I always figured Oracle would be just the kind of place that Steve would use as an example of corporate laziness and lacking in innovation.
Oracle is busy whipping Google’s ass over Android.
When Android dies, it will be because of the Oracle lawsuit, not Apple’s.
Oracle maintains, and the court case is going their way with revealed Google internal communications, that Android Dalvik is a barely concealed ripoff of of Oracle’s Java. Dalvik is the foundation of Android; without it, Android cannot exist.
I thought that Oracle has lost key patents vs Google?
And I thought corporate vision was an oxymoron. Very nice.
Kudos to SAP chairman Hasso Plattner for independent thinking and getting a jump on the competition.
How can this be considered effective or he be given kudo’s when there is no evidence or any measurement supplied that adopting 12,500 actually helped the company? Even if SAP only bought 10,000 of them that’s a $5 million dollar IT investment, how have they measured if its increased productivity? Can they show its not been an added IT burden and there are 12,500 employees with increased access to their gmail and iTunes movies?
I applaud embracing investment, but the article above provides no lessons or feedback, just that buying iPads was an investment choice. Doesn’t really say much at all.
If a significantly lighter and cheaper tablet can effectively replace a laptop, that almost by definition is an improvement.