Andrew O'Hara
IBM revealed over 277,000 macOS and iOS devices have been deployed to IBM employees around the globe with the 130,000 Macs in-place leading to consistently less IT support required over PC counterparts.
During the annual jamf Nation User Conference, IBM made waves with the announcement that they are open sourcing their in-house Mac@IBM provisioning code that should fuel Mac deployments at other companies.
Fletcher Previn, IBM's CIO that was appointed roughly two years ago, was on stage at the conference to discuss how the deployment has gone since the landmark announcement that they would allow employees to choose between Macs and PCs in 2015.
Previn revealed that Macs make up 25 percent of IBM's 537,000 active laptops, with 150,000 new laptops provisioned each year. This is up from 85,000 in September of 2016.
Previn also shared details on the IBM's Employee Workstation Buyback Program. After four years, when their Macs are refreshed, employees have the opportunity to purchase their machines from the company at their current market price. Fletcher told AppleInsider that this program was not intended as a cost-saving measure, but as "the right thing to do" for their employees.
As a nice side effect for the company, they've seen reduced tickets for damaged machines now that employees see it as potentially their own. As the number of deployed Macs has risen, the number of support tickets has largely not normalizing at between two and five percent.
A team of only 78 deal with all Mac-related issues that arise. When a Mac issue does pop up, 91 percent are dealt with quickly within the first contact with IT, as compared to 86 percent on Windows 10 devices. Additionally, 14 percent of Windows 10 issues involves dispatching IT personal desk side, more than double the 6 percent of macOS issues that require it.
During his presentation Previn also outlined other optimizations IBM has made to help reduce the IT burden of such a growing number of machines, including leveraging its Watson AI technology.
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26 Comments
I've been of the opinion that companies and governments that employ tech workers (individuals that use computers as a production device) should cease employing IT professionals. Just maintain a wifi network and printers. Then give all employees some sort of allowance to buy their own machine. When it breaks, they have to pay to fix it. If it never breaks, they keep the difference. Simple economics will solve this problem neatly. People care about their property, and will participate when they have a personal interest in the outcome.
Apple should take note that people (and large organizations) are actually interested in their laptops.
I love Macs and have had one at home for 25+ year. But, I rely on Excel a lot at work and Excel just sucks on a Mac, and it's just not worth emulating it when I can just use a cheap W10 machine.