IBM saving up to $535 per Mac per four years by replacing PCs with Macs
IBM has the largest enterprise Mac deployment in the world, and it is Apple’s biggest business customer for Macs, according to Mac maker. The reason is that the employees at IBM have the option to select between PC or Mac, wherein many of them go with the Mac.
So, does this mean that IBM is going to spend huge money in order to integrate Macs? IBM says that it has saved millions of dollars by getting employees to use Apple Macs rather than Windows PCs, as Windows machines apparently cost three times more in support than Macs.
According to Fletcher Previn, the VP of Workplace as a Service, this change will not affect the budget too much. At the JAMF Nation User Conference (JNUC) this week in Minneapolis. (JAMF makes mobile device management software for Apple products, and it also works with IBM). Previn delivered an update on the company’s rollout of Macs internally since it introduced Apple computers as an option for employees for the first time last year. He declared that the company had already received more than 90,000 Macs and it is expected to stay for quite some time.
Previn says that while a Mac initially costs anywhere from $117 to $454 more than a similarly configured Windows PC, IBM has saved between $273 to $543 per Mac in comparison to a similarly configured Windows PC over four years. This figure only goes on to show how much the company has saved just by getting rid of the PC.
“It ends up being $57.3 million more expensive per 100,000 Windows machines, or exactly 3X the cost,” he said. “And this is a conservative number. This represents the best pricing we’ve ever gotten from Microsoft.” Moreover, he added that so far 73 percent of the employees who use computers have decided that their next machine will be a Mac.
The company will have had more than 100,000 Macs at this rate by the end of the year. This makes them one of the most significant customers for Apple. IBM currently deploys about 1,300 new Macs every week, and that level of growth is “not translating to a need to scale the help desk in a linear way,” according to Previn.
Previn also declared: “The shortest distance to engaging employees is what’s in their hand or what’s on their desk. Every Mac we buy is, in fact, continuing to make and save IBM money.”
Today, “Macs are the standard at IBM, Japan, and PCs are the exception,” he said and seems to think this is the future across the rest of the company.
