6,500 workers at McGladrey get tablets

Computerworld - SAN DIEGO -- Accounting firm McGladrey LLP rolled out 6,500 tablets recently to all of its workers using AT&T's mobility services expertise, AT&T announced Tuesday.

The entire rollout took less than two months, AT&T said in a statement. The brand of tablets and the maker of the Mobile Device Management (MDM) software that AT&T implemented for McGladrey weren't specified.

AT&T touted the rollout at MobileCon, a conference here sponsored by CTIA that is focused on enterprise professionals, many of them grappling with Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) concerns. McGladrey wanted to offer employees tablets as a way to improve efficiency, but also to give them a "sense of empowerment," AT&T said.

AT&T was able to unwrap all the tablets, test them and load them with business apps in just 12 days. The MDM system that AT&T installed will help IT managers track the devices and allows them to remotely wipe information from any that are lost or stolen.

Also today, AT&T and IBM announced that they have agreed to deliver a network-enabled cloud service that runs over private networks, rather than over the public Internet. Private networks will keep the data more secure, the two companies said.

The service will be targeted at Fortune 1000 companies early next year. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Matt Hamblen covers mobile and wireless, smartphones and other handhelds, and wireless networking for Computerworld. Follow Matt on Twitter at @matthamblen or subscribe to Matt's RSS feed. His email address is mhamblen@computerworld.com.

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