“International Business Machines Corp. and Apple Inc. used to be bitter rivals, but lately they have been spending quality time together.,” Robert McMillan reports for The Wall Street Journal. “More than 100 IBM employees occupy Apple’s Cupertino, Calif., campus helping build iPhone and iPad apps for IBM customers such as Citigroup Inc., Sprint Corp. and Japan Post Holdings Co.”
“Things are looking different inside IBM, too. Once a company of blue suits, Wintel PCs and BlackBerrys, Big Blue is on track to become the world’s largest corporate user of MacBooks,” McMillan reports. “On Wednesday, the company will apply lessons it has learned to introduce a new service intended to help other companies adopt Macs.”
“Apparently, there were Apple fans in the company; when IBM first offered Macs to its workers in May, 185,000 employees read the internal announcement, Chief Information Officer Jeff Smith said. ‘It really hit a nerve with IBMers,’ he added,” McMillan reports. “IBM announced its app collaboration with Apple in July 2014. Within six months, it began shipping 43,000 iPads to its sales force. It now supports more than 110,000 Apple devices including these iPads, MacBooks and iPhones. By year’s end, Mr. Smith expects to manage 50,000 MacBooks alone, a number he has told Apple eventually may grow to 200,000.”
“The new services unveiled Wednesday, designed to help corporate clients deploy Macs by the thousands, are a direct outgrowth of that experience,” McMillan reports. “Much of what IBM knows about getting workers up and running on Macs, it learned from Apple. IBM sent Fletcher Previn, its Workplace as a Service vice president, to Apple headquarters last fall for a weeklong immersion in Apple’s approach to delivering Macs to its own employees. Mr. Previn said he was amazed by the smooth experience Apple had built for its own people… ‘It was certainly eye-opening to see how they are able to manage large numbers of people with far fewer resources than you would see in a traditional PC environment,’ said Mr. Previn.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: “It was certainly eye-opening to see how they are able to manage large numbers of people with far fewer resources than you would see in a traditional PC environment.”
No shit. We and many other Mac users have been telling you that for well over a DECADE!
Oh well, better late than never!
SEE ALSO:
IBM could become the biggest buyer of Apple MacBooks – August 1, 2015
IBM ends workers’ Windows PC hell, offers employees Apple Macs for the first time – May 28, 2015
Apple & IBM working together, WWST?
“Apple & IBM working together, WWST?” Not sure what WWST means.
Wallet, watch, spectacles and testicles?
WWST- I thought it meant, ‘What would Steve think?’
Steve would say “welcome to the light” IBM. 😀
Apple and IBM have been working together for over twenty years now; Taligent, KaleidaLabs, Apple Network Servers, PowerPC.
I’m tired of hearing from the IT doofuses that all the Enterprise tools available on the PC aren’t on the Mac. Why the hell not? Hopefully IBM (& Apple) helps that process along.
It’s great that since IBM no longer makes PC’s (for some time now) they have no particular allegiance to Windows any longer. I’m sure they also get a vicarious thrill out of sticking it to Redmond any which way they can too.
“I’m tired of hearing from the IT doofuses that all the Enterprise tools available on the PC aren’t on the Mac.”
Well sorry but it’s true… I’m solution architect and system engineer since 15 years now and have managed quite a lot of really heterogeneous environments…
Trust me… Anything else that MS computers in the network has ALWAYS been a pain.
Best case scenario: Non MS systems run in a BYOD environment and all applications are run as Citrix Apps, virtual apps or whatever allows applications to be used remotely. In this case there’s not much overhead to allow these systems in the network (Except providing a protected network segment)
Medium case scenario : Non MS computer are in a special network segment that protects the rest of the enterprise but run their own applications (Often seen with graphists)… Still acceptable but requires additional staff to run after the needs of each Apple user (Sorry but these guys are often a pain for helpdesk staff)
Worst case scenario : Non-MS systems must be fully integrated in the enterprise network… And here the hell begins (Except for Linux/BSD servers). I’ve NEVER seen this working correctly… Not sometimes, not rarely… Never!!
Enterprise administration tools on MS just run circles around Apple here… Maybe in a few (many) years it will be usable too… But we’re still far of something really usable
“Medium case scenario : Non MS computer are in a special network segment that protects the rest of the enterprise but run their own applications (Often seen with graphists)… Still acceptable but requires additional staff to run after the needs OF EACH APPLE USER (Sorry but these guys are often a pain for helpdesk staff)”
Sorry, but you just disqualified yourself as being truthful by that statement. It is a fact that Apple users overall and in general are more adapt at fixing their own problems than PC/Windows users. Sure there is the one or two but EACH? It is a Fact that Mac/Apple users require less IT support than Window’s users.
Windows was built from the ground up to be a Tech Specialist domain. Macs, Apple is from the ground up a Users domain.
Case in point on the “ground up” philosophy: Windows sees all files and work from a “techie” point of view, therefore, want a file? Look for the drive. Which drive is it on? Gotta find the drive.
Apple/Mac: need a file? which folder is it in. No need to look for a “drive”, that stuff is hidden. The Mac user interface is to help the user, not make you look for a “drive”.
The whole concept of Windows is built upon the techie mindset; the whole concept of Apple is built upon getting the job done instead of lauding the tech requirements.
Ok… One point for you “EACH Apple user” was probably a bad word choice…
The AVERAGE Apple user would be better adapted…
But the ground problem remains… The AVERAGE Apple User has 3 caracteristics that often transform him in a pain for helpdesk staff.
1) They (often wrongly) consider themselves and their choices as superior to what is in place. Because they were able to setup data sharing between their Apple devices they consider themselves as high skilled engineers and always want to explain to the support staff how to do their work… When this self proclamed engineer is the CEO of the company it becomes hell for all the IT staff (Infra included)
2) Mostly they are part of an allready privileged category in the company (WE have the “NEED” of an Apple, this is because we are SUPPERIOR, so do what we want. We don’t have to obey the rules.
3) They believe in the legends that their computer is safe from Virus or attacks and because of it would become an entry point for various threats due to their behaviour if no special security measures would be taken to seperate them from the rest of the world.
I give you even one more point… The question of drives. Even in a “techie” view drives is a limitation in which I often bumped. As for myself I would highly prefer the mountpoint model also for Windows… But alas…
For all the rest… No question. Windows is much more adapted to an enterprise environment.
Novad, please post your name and full resume out these so we can be sure not to hire you. Thanks. And have a nice day.
Funny you.
Believe it or not but I’m a professional. I don’t work for fanboys but for companies or administrations that have real productivity goals.
I don’t think we would ever meet in “real life”.
I will agree with you, and some will slam me for it, however it’s been that way from the beginning. IBM saw the PC as a client server system. A easier to scale mainframe dumb terminal system. The Apple ][ was a stand alone device and the Mac was designed to be portable ( it came with a cool messenger bag ). MS has always been focused on large scale systems that need good administration. Unfortunately this was not understood by most people when the internet made home computers practical. People bought what they used at work not knowing it required a lot of maintenance. MS has never understood the mobile market and keeps making the same mistakes. They didn’t think about a portable game when they created the Xbox. They were always behind in phones; Symbian, Palm, and BlackBerry were ahead of them before iPhone and Android. They did not learn the lesson from Sony when they took on the iPod. You can’t just match iPod you need to be a lot better and have new ones every year. Even worse they came up with a stupid interface that hid over half the stuff on the screen and then kept using it on their phones and Windows. They wrongly claim they came up with the tablet. All they did was create a touchscreen interface for a laptop or all-in-one that sat on top of the OS. Apple has been brilliant with portables, however not with large distributed networks. Yes you can set up large systems with Mac’s, it’s just easier with Windows. IBM is solving Apple’s problem. They invented the concept of large systems when they hired computers; women (mostly) who did the the basic math for the big smart men. Yes Windows has better tools for network administrators now. Don’t think it will stay that way. With Windows 10 MS has shown they still don’t understand mobile.
I am not a network administrator, but I have managed a few small networks and have used server tools. This is the company IBM is partnering with. These tools look interesting:
http://www.jamfsoftware.com/lp/managing-mac-in-a-windows-world/
There are administration tools for Apple devices in enterprise but they come with two major problems.
Even if you can make many things with them there are limitations and you often have to work around these limitations to achieve the same as on Windows systems
These tools are always additional tools that must be added to the already existing tools which require separate skills and administration staff… I dream of correct ADMX implementation that would allow full manageability of Apple computers through GPOs… THIS would be the real breakthrough to see Apple computers in enterprise networks
I mostly agree with you.
Windows is actually the system that fits the best in a professional environment while Apple fits well at home (But not only… Still depends of some other factors).
If the home user has a different use of its home computer than he has at work (posting on social medias excepted)a windows computer is still a better fit. He’ll find the same apps at the same place and with the same look and feel than at work. For some users this is really import.
If the home user is a gamer… No question at all. Apple is not a viable solution
If the user has a different usage at home and that this usage is a bit more sophisticated than some web task Apple can be a good solution as the easy interface can fit newcomers and here personal taste also comes in play.
As for tablets… Neither MS nor Apple invented them. Each has implemented something that covers some needs but not all. One point to Apple for having popularized it.
MS tablets where more a POC than something usable. I’ve never seen it really used BTW. Apple made a multimedia playing device on which some productivity tools have been added.
The Surface 3 Pro line on its side is really an interesting device as it combines tablet with real work compatible device. It’s maybe the first tablet I don’t consider as a toy.
That said… Yes… Apple is or could be a good choice for quite some home users.
Sorry… I ment:
If the home user has a SAME use of its home computer than he has at work (posting on social medias excepted) a windows computer is still a better fit.
The day is coming to be sure. It’s in dribs and drabs but ultimately TCO and low support costs will win the day. Windows, let’s face it, has always been a BSOD, registry, DLL kludge. I told my friends working at Microsoft 10-12 years ago they needed to rewrite or replace it as Apple did – the thought of which sends terror into the hearts of Redmond as the playing field would really level out. But maybe the BeOS is still available? 🙂
I hope IBM will start making serious work of a real Mac style back-end, e.g. non-Windows. Microsoft out and IBM in. If anyone can do it, it will be IBM.
God I love this take: “Welcome IBM. Seriously.” It never gets old!!!
The times, they are changnin’….
SJ is looking down with a big smile. RIP SJ, RIP.
Well, if WS will turn from looking backwards at MS to the future, not only in technology but in the partnership of Apple and IBM (who sees the future) the mid to long range growth potential for both is fantastic.
Won’t change much. The weakest link is always the dumb f*(k behind the keyboard who can’t remember the same password he typed the morning before.
Lol, you mean 1234?