Interview with Forbes: MicroStrategy’s Rapid Adoption of the iPad
MicroStrategy COO, Sanju Bansal, was recently interviewed by Forbes on MicroStrategy’s extensive use of iPads across the company. You can read the complete interview online.
A few interesting excerpts from the interview:
Forbes: Will the iPad replace the PC inside corporations?
Sanju Bansal: If you’re doing content creation, a laptop or desktop makes sense. But if you’re a content consumer, which managers and sales guys in the field are, it’s a great device. Within about one second it’s on. It’s lightweight and very portable. You can share it across a desk or conference table. Rarely do people hand a laptop across the table, even though they can, but they do share an iPad. You’re sharing information with other people. And the device itself is culturally acceptable.
Forbes: How many iPads does Microstrategy use?
Sanju Bansal: We have about 2,000 people and we bought more than 1,000 iPads. Our sales force uses them to share videos, presentations and documents. They can share our entire library of 10,000 documents at a client site, ask which ones are of interest, and send them right there instead of going back to their desktop. It eases communication in sales meetings. And in our internal meetings, they’re making the meetings more fact-based. You have access to all your corporate data and facts.
Forbes: So is this useful for many companies or just some companies?
Sanju Bansal: In my talks with about 100 senior-level people at as many companies over the past six months, the feeling is that the tablet is here to stay and it’s going to be bigger than everyone expected it to be. It’s an always-on, always-with-you data experience. The other thing is that we spend about $1,500 for a laptop and another $300 per year over five years for the Microsoft Office suite. That same capability on an iPad is $600 to $800, and the software is $10 per application forever. It’s about one-third or one-fourth the price. The cost of ownership is inexpensive–and that’s just the first generation before they drop prices.
