Mac adoption at SAP doubles as Apple enterprise reach grows

We run our business on these!

Apple continues to grow in the enterprise with its systems in use across the Fortune top 500, now comes news that Mac adoption at SAP has doubled in just 15-months.

The Mac is an enterprise machine

There are almost 26,000 Macs in use across SAP at this point, the majority of which (82%) are running macOS Catalina, confirmed Martin Lang, SAP’s VP Enterprise Mobility today in a Tweet.

I interviewed Lang, since then he has been working to implement cutting-edge mobile device support at SAP.

He appeared at the recent JNUC enterprise event to discuss this, where he also revealed his company’s work to port iPad apps across to Macs using Catalyst in macOS.

The company deployed 83,000 iOS and 170 Apple TV devices in 2018 and is using Jamf Pro to create a native and integrated IT and user experience across all Apple devices.

In fact, integration is so tight that employees moving to the Mac only need to use an internal SAP app which automates the process.

With a growing number of SAP employees choosing Apple devices, SAP decided to reorganize its IT teams to create an Apple Center of Excellence team in 2018.

The number of SAP colleagues who chose a Mac as their primary computer has doubled over the last 15 months, it's at almost 26K now with 82% of them running the latest macOS Catalina #lifeatsap pic.twitter.com/jzSH4LHEUd

— MartinLang (@MartinLang) February 3, 2020

Windows are being replaced

News that Mac adoption at SAP has doubled across the last 15-months is a pretty good barmoter for enterprise Mac adoption as the Windows replacement cycle begins.

It seems relevant to note that IBM CIO Fletcher Previn recently pointed to cost benefits, operational and productivity efficiencies experienced by IBM employees who had shifted to the Mac, saying:

“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 program.”

Up next?

It seems clear at this point that enterprises seeking to upgrade their existing equipment should see this migration as a really good opportunity to begin offering their own choice programs to employees.

It will be interesting to see how rapidly workers given that choice will move to Mac, as judging by adoption data from IBM and SAP, the momentum may be impressive.

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