7 reasons IBM says every enterprise should support Macs
“I’m not saying Macs are better, but the evidence is…”
I had the pleasure of watching IBM CIO Fletcher Previn deliver some astonishing facts concerning his company’s massive Apple@IBM deployment, and thought enterprise pros may want to take note of some of the facts and figures he shared at JNUC 2019.
What is the Apple deployment at IBM?
IBM supports around 385,000 people in over 170 countries with a team of around 12,000. It provides over 4,500 apps and hosts 1,300 offices wordwide plus data centers.
Within its business, the company deploys around 135,000 new laptops every year, and currently manages around half a million of these.
IBM is around 60% Windows, 30% Mac and 10% Linux, Previn revealed – though the company supports around 290,000 Apple devices.
1. Net Promoter Score is much higher for the Mac
IBM has the deployment numbers to gather accurate data that reflects real world experience. It is also a company that makes a lot of use of the Net Promoter Score system in order to make sense of situations. Previn revealed a huge difference in NPS scores between Mac and Windows systems deployed at IBM.
“The Windows 10 programme at IBM has a net promoter score 15,” he said, pausing for a moment to reveal, “Our Mac programme is 47.5.”
In theory this should translate into higher productivity, employee satisfaction, staff retention and more. Doest it?
2. Macs are easier to keep up-to-date
22% of Mac users at IBM upgraded to Catalina in the first week of release. Previn said that “typically” 90% of Mac users at IBM upgrade to the latest OS within two months.
3. Less overhead to manage these devices at scale
IBM had to pester Windows 10 users across the company to upgrade to a key security or OS release 95 times in the last 12-months. It only had to remind Mac users to install an update 12 times. “There are roughly eight times the number of updates required for us to deploy on Windows,” he said.
5x the cost
4. It’s easier to upgrade to Macs
- 14.4% of Windows users at IBM reported having difficulty migrating from to a new device.
- 2.6% of Mac users felt the same.
5. Macs need less support
IBM needs “about one” engineer for every 10,000 windows 10 devices, Previn said. “That same engineer can support about 30,000 Macs,” he observed.
“When we can’t fix a problem on the phone and we have to send somebody out to a desk it’s a much more expensive operation for us. Windows users are five times more likely we need on-site support,” said Previn.
6. Mac users perform better
Cheaper to run and maintain, easier to upgrade, and delivering highly prized user experiences, surely Windows is the more productive platform?
Not at IBM, where high value sales deals 16% larger for Mac OS users compared to Windows users. There are 22% more Mac OS users who achieve the highest rating and their annual performance assessment in innovation compared to PC users.
7. Mac users tend to stick around
Mac OS users at IBM are 17% less likely to leave the company.
Summing up
Previn summed up IBM’s findings:
“I said that our mission is to create a productive environment for people continually improving the work experience, let’s look at what is the impact of this programme..”
- The net promoter score is higher for the Mac.
- It’s easier to keep them up to date.
- Migrating to new devices is less difficult.
- Less overhead to manage these devices at scale,
- They require less Help Desk support.
- Salespeople have higher value sales deals.
- Employees perform better.
- And they’re less likely to leave.
“Now, I don’t know if better employees want Macs, or giving Macs to employees makes them better. You got to be careful about cause and effect — but there seems to be a lot of corroborating evidence that says you want to have a choice programme. And with that, thank you very much.”
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