Demand for ipad forces Macquaire Uni into corporate procurement initiative

29 Oct 2010

Source:  ZDNet
Macquarie University this week revealed that it had already embraced "hundreds" of iPads to meet staff demand for the hyped Apple tablet, only months after the device launched in Australia. Some of the tablets have been brought on campus by students and staff for personal use, but the university has also developed a standardised corporate procurement initiative to meet demand.

The university's chief information officer Marc Bailey said the institution had initially been responding to staff requests for the tablet on an ad-hoc basis. But the situation snowballed and Macquarie University quickly had to develop a more standardised corporate approach. "It became pretty clear within weeks of launch that it was going to become huge," he said.

By September, the university had developed what Bailey described as a "coordinated turnkey approach" to the situation, working closely with Apple to do so. Staff can now order iPads directly from the university's Information Technology Services division. If a tablet breaks, they send it back centrally for a replacement. Bailey said that, so far, the most popular applications had proven to be apps such as Dropbox, which allows files to quickly and easily be transferred from a PC to an iPad for viewing, and GoodReader, which allows users to read PDF documents and annotate them with notes.

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