Customer story: How a university managed 10,000 iPads with AirWatch
Ten thousand iPads can look like a simple hardware purchase until they begin arriving across a national university’s campuses, classrooms and work placements. The institution in this customer story needed a consistent way to enrol devices, deliver course content, protect student records and give help-desk staff a workable support process. Teaching sites in Melbourne and Sydney reflected the scale of the task, while regional placements carried university access well beyond campus Wi-Fi.
Students already carried personal iPads and iPhones, often using shared household or family devices for short tasks. Between a crowded Melbourne Metro train, a café in Parramatta and late-night study sessions, a university-issued security profile had to work across unreliable networks and changing locations. Rather than assume ownership from a serial number, the team designed enrolment around student identity, device ownership and the level of access each course required.
Australian privacy obligations shaped the design. Many activities fell under the federal Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles. Victorian entities also had to consider the Privacy and Data Protection Act 2014, while NSW organisations assessed the Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act 1998, particularly for health and service records. The university therefore needed role-based access, auditable changes and clear retention practices. This mattered in a local education market where BYOD is common, device fleets are mixed and procurement must fit fixed budget and semester cycles.
AirWatch, the enterprise mobility management platform now associated with VMware, offered a way to bring those requirements into one operating model. The university could configure iPads, distribute apps, monitor compliance and support endpoints without depending on a technician standing beside every device. It could also preserve different controls for university-owned hardware and personally owned tablets. That separation gave the project a practical starting point instead of attempting to manage 10,000 devices as one undifferentiated group.
A BYOD programme at Australian scale
The initial inventory showed a mixed fleet rather than a uniform hardware estate. Some iPads were centrally purchased for specialist libraries, studios and simulation labs; others came through BYOD, with a smaller group configured as loan devices. The team tagged every record by owner, course year, campus and intended level of protection. That inventory became the basis for enrolment, support and replacement decisions, giving administrators a clear view of what the 10,000-device figure actually represented.
Students enrolled through a university portal and authenticated with their existing credentials. AirWatch then applied the appropriate profile, applications and restrictions for each role. Automated Device Enrollment and Apple Business Manager workflows reduced manual pairing, while a staged rollout allowed the project team to begin with a single faculty before moving into larger cohorts. Students received clear prompts on camera, location and Bluetooth permissions at the point they mattered.
Shared iPads required careful handling. A borrowed tablet could move between classmates within one day, so course access was limited to the active unit and personal data was kept separate where possible. Device compliance determined whether an app, assessment platform or stored file became available. This role-based approach created consistent guardrails without blocking students from using their own hardware for reading, revision and accessibility tools.
Building a repeatable device workflow
Before deployment, configuration depended on imaging benches, email exchanges and spreadsheets. A password change or application update could take days to reach every cohort, while help-desk staff often asked students to repeat the same troubleshooting steps. Remote support was difficult when devices were at home or travelling. The university treated these issues as workflow failures, not individual user errors, because the same manual sequence was being repeated at scale.
Using AirWatch, the team turned routine changes into centrally managed configurations. Course teams could publish apps through the corporate catalogue; IT could stage software updates; and security policies could require encryption, a passcode and a current operating system before a device received sensitive content. New starters completed enrolment from a desk or home network, with less dependence on imaging appointments in Melbourne or Sydney.
Support also moved closer to the user. Technicians could see a device’s assigned policy, operating-system version, compliance state and installed apps, then guide remediation through remote actions. Lost devices could be locked and selectively wiped. These capabilities reduced repeat calls and gave service-desk leaders a more reliable basis for deciding whether a device needed repair, replacement or simple re-enrolment.
The operating difference in practice
The practical change came from connecting identity, device state and access within one managed workflow. The university’s operating model became clearer when its former process was compared with the new approach:
| Operating area | Before AirWatch | With AirWatch |
|---|---|---|
| Device enrolment | Email exchanges, USB imaging and spreadsheets | Role-based enrolment and policy assignment |
| Application access | Individual logins and shared passwords | Single sign-on and role-based app access |
| Configuration | Manual updates for each cohort | Central profiles and staged rollouts |
| Compliance | Checks after reported issues | Real-time posture checks and guided remediation |
| Support | Device-by-device troubleshooting | Remote diagnostics and policy visibility |
| Data separation | User-managed folders and storage | Managed containers and selective wipe |
| Visibility | Separate faculty and IT logs | Consolidated reporting by cohort and owner |
Policy exceptions became visible within one reporting cycle rather than being discovered through separate logs. The team could identify a non-compliant cohort, adjust its configuration and confirm that changes had landed. This gave the 10,000 iPads a shared operating baseline while allowing faculties to retain local differences.
Protecting university data and access
The university applied controls according to the sensitivity of the resource. Students working with ordinary course content received core apps and web access, while privileged staff, research teams and clinical placements received stronger authentication and encrypted storage. Because the Privacy Act and relevant state rules can apply differently across campuses, access entitlements were tied to institutional roles and reviewed on a schedule. Audit trails showed who changed a policy and which device received it.
One migration issue involved old scanned course notes stored in PDFs protected by obsolete 40-bit RC4 encryption. The legacy PDF recovery guide explains how PDF Decrypter Pro can open those files for review and secure republication. This was a separate archive-conversion task rather than an AirWatch feature, but clearing the backlog helped the university move valuable learning materials into its managed content library without treating old content as a low-priority security concern.
Device-level protection worked alongside content controls. Restrictions limited unmanaged apps in sensitive configurations, and conditional access blocked coursework when a device fell out of policy. Staff could locate a device quickly after a loss, remove university data while preserving personal photographs, and document the action. Those choices supported the university’s obligations under applicable privacy and health-record legislation while giving students a clear recovery path when a legitimate device was flagged.
Measured gains across campus
Success was tracked through enrolment completion, time to first access, help-desk contacts and compliance exceptions. Reviewing those measures by faculty and device owner showed where the process was working and where a policy was too restrictive. The results were most useful when discussed with course teams, since a security setting that delayed an assessment had a cost even if it met a technical standard.
Operational results
- Most devices reached a compliant state without a desk-side visit.
- Course configurations were deployed consistently across large cohorts.
- Remote diagnostics shortened support cases and reduced repeat visits.
- Exception reporting replaced manual spreadsheet reviews.
Campus outcomes
- Students gained faster access to apps and assessment tools.
- Loan and shared-device users faced fewer account lockouts.
- Privacy officers received clearer evidence of access and device changes.
The central lesson was to make device management part of course design, not an administrative task added after delivery. Course teams received a short briefing on ownership, permitted use and escalation routes, while IT retained control of the platform. This shared accountability allowed the university to expand from the initial faculty without turning every new cohort into a fresh support project.
Take the next step with AirWatch
Similar programmes can begin with a bounded pilot: define the user groups, match controls to actual risks, establish success measures and confirm that support teams can act on alerts. A pilot also exposes identity, app and content dependencies before they become obstacles at campus scale. From there, AirWatch provides a practical base for managing institutional devices and BYOD tablets through a single configuration and support model.
Organisations can see how the platform fits their university by starting with AirWatch’s fully functional 30-day free trial. Review its pricing and package comparisons, read customer stories for other deployment patterns, and contact the sales team for a tailored walkthrough based on your institution’s device fleet.