locking down "find my iPad"

I am deploying a few hundred iPad for our biz and I am finding it largely very simple for the users to simply turn off the "find my iPad" device by either deleting the iCloud account or even worse "restoring" the iPad through iTunes.

Any way to prevent this?

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I can't provide any specific help, but a couple of things to do is to visit Apple - iPad - iPad in Business - Resources and read through the numerous documents that Apple has provided and second is to call Apple directly and have them guide you in this process.

Do report back on what you find, should you call Apple, so that others may benefit as well..

In the meantime, a simple solution might be the built in restrictions functionality (see here). With those, you can prevent the user from making changes to the iCloud account.