IBM's 200,000 Macs have made a happier, more productive workforce

IBM has published its latest study focusing on the benefits of Apple products in enterprise, and has found that a fleet of over 200,000 Macs leads to far lower support costs, smaller numbers of support staff, and happier employees versus a Windows deployment.

In the study presented on Tuesday, IBM says that employees that used Mac machines were 22 percent more likely to exceed expectations in performance reviews compared to Windows users. Mac-using employees generating sales deals have 16% larger proceeds as well.

"The state of IT is a daily reflection of what IBM thinks and feels about its employees," said Fletcher Previn, CIO, IBM. "I've said it before - when did it become OK to live like the Jetsons at home but the Flintstones at work? We aim to create a productive environment for IBMers and continuously improve their work experience, and that's why we introduced our employee-choice program to IBM employees in 2015."

Turning to employee satisfaction, the first-of-its-kind study shows that Mac users were 17 percent less likely to leave IBM compared to their Windows counterparts. Mac users also were happier with the software available, with 5 percent asking for additional software compared to 11 percent of Windows users.

Previn touched on the cost to support the Macs in the workplace. A team of seven engineers is needed to maintain 200,000 Macs whereas a team of 20 is needed for that number of Windows PCs.

During setup, the migration process was simple for 98 percent of Mac users versus only 86 percent of those moving from Windows 7 to Windows 10. Windows users were also five times as likely to need on-site support.

Earlier this year Jamf released a study that showed reliability was the number one reason users preferred to work on a Mac rather than a PC.

IBM has made a number of announcements at JNUC in the past. Last year at JNUC 2018, Previn announced the computing behemoth was open-sourcing its Mac@IBM provisioning code as well as the huge returns it saw with its Mac deployment.

The Mac@IBM program kicked off in 2015 where IBM was deploying 1,900 Mac devices per week supported by only 24 help desk staff members.

Latest Exclusives

Latest comparisons

46 Comments

MacPro 18 Years · 19845 comments

About 5 years ago

As we all already could have predicted but nice to see in print.

h2p 15 Years · 335 comments

Whoa. Windows@IBM users were about 500% more likely to need migration assistance just within Windows. That stat blows me away. This in a workforce of 381,100 is a feather in Apple’s cap. Goodonya folks. (https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/IBM/ibm/number-of-employees)

Rhythmagic 5 Years · 63 comments

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

GeorgeBMac 8 Years · 11421 comments

AppleInsider said:

...
employees that used Mac machines were 22 percent more likely to exceed expectations in performance reviews compared to Windows users. Employees generating sales deals has 16% larger proceeds from Mac users as well.
...

I guess having read enumerable medical studies proving that black is white and the sun rises in the west, and having started as an accountant fully cognizant of the truth behind the saying that: "Figures lie and liars figure", I have become quite cynical of statistics -- particularly those that fail the smell test.

In the case of medical studies it has become generally accepted in the medical community that the primary determinant of the outcome of a study is who funded the study. And, we all know about accountants and lawyers...

This one fails the smell test. It reeks of using statistics to prove a point.
Are Macs better in the business environment? Very likely -- particularly if you it's a favorable environment. But, these stats sound highly suspicious to me.

StrangeDays 8 Years · 12986 comments

GeorgeBMac said:

AppleInsider said:

...
employees that used Mac machines were 22 percent more likely to exceed expectations in performance reviews compared to Windows users. Employees generating sales deals has 16% larger proceeds from Mac users as well.
...

I guess having read enumerable medical studies proving that black is white and the sun rises in the west, and having started as an accountant fully cognizant of the truth behind the saying that: "Figures lie and liars figure", I have become quite cynical of statistics -- particularly those that fail the smell test.

In the case of medical studies it has become generally accepted in the medical community that the primary determinant of the outcome of a study is who funded the study. And, we all know about accountants and lawyers...

This one fails the smell test. It reeks of using statistics to prove a point.
Are Macs better in the business environment? Very likely -- particularly if you it's a favorable environment. But, these stats sound highly suspicious to me.

This isn't new news and has been quantified before. IBM has done their own studies and thus are not funded like drug manufacturers do for their studies:

https://www.cio.com/article/3133945/ibm-says-macs-save-up-to-543-per-user.html

https://www.businessinsider.com/an-ibm-it-guy-macs-are-300-cheaper-to-own-than-windows-2016-10