Ruby Edwards for Apple World Today:
Today at the 2019 Jamf Nation User Conference (JNUC), IBM announced research showing its employees who use Mac are more likely to stay with IBM and exceed performance expectations compared to PC users. Since announcing its Mac@IBM program in 2015, IBM now has over 290,000 Apple devices within its organization.
In 2015, IBM first appeared on stage at JNUC in 2015 to announce its Mac@IBM program. IBM was deploying 1,900 Mac devices per week, all supported by 24 help desk staff members. At the time, that equated to one staff member supporting 5,400 Mac users, compared to one support staff member supporting 242 PC users.
In 2016, Fletcher Previn, CIO at IBM, came back on the JNUC stage to give an update on IBM’s deployment. With over 90,000 Macs deployed by 2016, Previn demonstrated how IBM saves anywhere from $273-$543 per Mac compared to a PC, over a four-year span.
In 2018, Previn announced IBM now managed more than 277,000 Apple devices, all supported by 78 staff members.
MacDailyNews Take: TCO.
When you look at total cost of ownership, the Mac wins easily. – MacDailyNews, May 16, 2006
Is this article missing the main points or what? (Yes. It’s missing the most interesting points!)
IBM’s CIO stated at JUNC:
There are 22% more macOS users who exceeded expectations in performance reviews compared to Windows users. (Thus, in IBM’s view macOS users are much better workers than Windows users.)
macOS users tend to close sales deals that are 16% larger than Windows users. (Mac users bring in more revenue to the company.)
macOS users are 17% less likely to leave IBM compared to Windows users. (Either Mac users are just plain happier in their jobs and tools they get to use or Mac users are just more stable. Either way that is a reduction in turnover overhead costs for IBM.)
5% of macOS users ask for additional software compared to 11% of Windows users. (Clearly Macs let you get your job done more often and require less additional software to do your job. A company has to buy less add on software to make their workers functional.)
Yes, this is from the CIO of IBM!
Those points are what Mac users should point to in their fights with corporate IT departments.
It’s very much like the Intel study back in the 90s (that was out there and then rather quickly pulled). It showed that the greatest cost of TCO for a combination of Macs and Wintel boxes (remember, there were no Intel based Macs in the wild back then) was with 90% Wintel and 10% Macs. The study showed that if you were 100% Wintel the cost was less, BUT if you were 100% Mac the cost was WAY less. Even being just 30% Mac was lest costly for TCO than 100% Wintel. Not surprisingly that report was pulled a few weeks after it was made public.
Such reports are all well and good … but unfortunately, a TCO that’s lower by only ~$100/year just isn’t all that compelling, particularly when the initial hardware purchase price difference is usually much higher.
And this is illustrated by the big difference in IT support staff. Those folks aren’t free and the really important take-away here is despite what appears to be a 10:1 reduction in support staff overhead, there’s still only roughly $100 per unit per year being saved (that $273-$543 savings averages to ~$400 and it is over a four year lifecycle).
Doing some parametric math, if an IT staff can support just 2080 Macs/year, that’s one man-hour per seat per year. Similarly, if the PC support is 10x worse, that’s 10 man-hours per seat per year. That puts the cost savings at 9 man-hours per year … which at a fully burdened rate of only $100/yr is a $900/year cost delta. And Apple is only able to deliver $100/year of this? No, it is just not adding up.
The Macs cost more originally. Over the four year year lifespan of the device, the reduced cost of support makes back all of the differential plus an additional $400 (more or less). When you have hundreds of thousands of devices, a $400 savings in total cost of ownership per machine adds up to real money.
Yes, but now “follow the money” to do the math.
Specifically, the reduction in IT results in a net savings of $900/yr * 4 years = $3600 … but of this $3600, it is being reported that only $400 is being realized by the customer as a savings.
That’s a $3600 – $400 = $3200 discrepancy, based on their own claims.
And sure, we haven’t yet accounted for how Macs cost more originally. For example, if we are willing to say that the average price of a Mac is +$3200 more than a PC, then the cost discrepancy becomes zero and the mystery is solved.
But I don’t really believe that a Mac costs $3200 MORE than a PC, do you?
For conditions where the Mac is less than $3200 more, the math says that something’s not kosher in the cost savings claims made. For example, if we say that a Mac only costs $1000 more than a PC, then the implications are there’s $2200/node unaccounted for.
Now it could be that the cost savings is actually 4x-5x better than what they’re bragging it to be … or it could be that the savings really only is $400/seat and someone’s been lying in one or more of their cost-savings claims.
That’s why I said that the math doesn’t add up.