IBM has over 90,000 Macs (and they’re three times less expensive to support than Windows)

At today’s Jamf Nation User Conference, Fletcher Previn, IBM vice president of Workplace as a Service, said that the company now has over 90,000 Macs deployed and that this number will pass 100,000 before the end of the year. (Last October the number was 30,000, so it’s obvious how quickly things are growing.)

“And we think that this is just the tip of the iceberg in the beginning of our deployment of Macs,” Previn said. “We add 1,300 new Macs per week.”

IBM has the largest Mac deployment in the world. And it’s resulting in cost savings and more employee engagement. When it comes to mobile devices, 66% use iOS gadgets. Counting iPhones and iPads 217,000 are in use at IBM. Ninety-one percent of IBM users are happy with their Apple devices. And less than 1% have returned their Mac and asked for a PC laptop instead. Seventy-three percent of IBM employees want their next computer to be a Mac.

Previn said that allowing IBM employees to use Macs (and iOS devices) saves time and money. Macs account of less than 4% of support tickets. Previn says that IBM has to deal with Mac issues 104x less than Windows issues. An interesting tidbit: 33% of Macs at IBM are already using macOS Sierra (47% use El Capitan and 20% use Yosemite). Sixty-five percent of iOS devices are running iOS 10.

Based on a four-year cost per 100,000 machines, Previn said it’s approximately three times more expensive to support the company’s Windows systems than its Mac systems. And Windows systems requires twice as many support calls as Macs. What’s more, IBM Japan has announced that Macs are now standard and that Windows laptops require an exception. 

The Jamf Nation User Conference, hosted by Jamf, is the largest Apple IT management community in the world and is underway this week. Jamf‘s goal is to “help organizations succeed with Apple products.”