Best Practise for deploying a 'clone' image across 200 android tablets (Samsung GT-P7510)

My objective is to be able to create a master 'image' of an android tablet, and then duplicate that image across about 200 identical tablets to streamline the administration of a university's pool of loan tablets (e.g. to roll out updated/new apps, to 'clean' them when they are returned, etc.) What would be the best way to do that? (I've seen a number of posts around the subject, using nandroid backup, adb, zen toolkit, and so forth, but all rather old and nothing definitive) - Currently the tablets are Samsung Galaxy 10.1 (GT-P7510) running stock Android 4.0.4 - but it'd be nice to have a procedure that ought to work if these are replaced by some other tablets. - The tablets aren't currently rooted, but could be if that made things much easier. It'd have to be a real advantage, though, as that might compromise the warranties on future new stocks of tablets. - These tablets don't have external SD storage, but it'd be great to have a process that would re-initialise ALL aspects of a tablet, even if it did have external (or ancillary internal) SD storage. - I'd ideally like to create/document a procedure that someone in basic first-line tech support could follow. - If it could avoid having to buy 200 paid app licenses, then that'd be great too :) I'd appreciate any pointers you folks could give on how best to do this: I would imagine with android tablets becoming much more popular over the past year, that there must be corporations, education establishments and the like doing this...