Here's a scenario few CIOs would relish being a part of: A successful manufacturing company posts great revenues, and the next thing you know the CEO decides to immediately reward each and every one of his 5,400 employees with an iPad. This is what happened to Ashwin Ballal, CIO of the semiconductor equipment manufacturer KLA-Tencor, reports CIO magazine's Tom Kaneshige.

KLA-Tencor, based in Silicon Valley, planned to let employees use their iPads to access the company network for email, web applications, calendar and other tasks. Sales and service reps could also use it to get hold of critical information via a virtual desktop. All of the employees--half of whom did not reside in the United States--were eager to get their hands on the iPad, but the device hadn't even been released in all of the relevant countries.

"That's when my nightmare began," Ballal said.

Walking employees through the steps of connecting the device to the corporate network presented a big logistical challenge. The prospect of thousands of calls to the help desk in the first few days following the iPad roll out led Ballal to locate a mobile management technology so that employees would be able to figure it out on their own. KLA-Tencor went with a technology from MobileIron, which offered simple iPad set-up directions.  

"People want to do self-service, but you have to give them documentation that they can follow, written at the third- or fourth-grade level with a minimal number of steps," Ballal said.

One thing that helped Ballal's team is that it had already dealt with many of the technical challenges of the iPad's operating system. The company had supported iPhones for a number of years, and it already had established policies for passwords and other requirements.

For more:
- see Tom Kaneshige's article at CIO

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