“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.