Since giving employees the option to use Macs in place of PCs, it looks like IBM has been able to cut the workload for its help desk staff on the back of Apple's penchant for simplicity. Speaking at the JAMF Nation User Conference, IBM's Vice President of Workplace-as-a-Service, Fletcher Previn, noted that, not only is IBM deploying a large number of Macs to employees, but those employees are significantly less likely to call the help desk for support when compared to the company's PC users. From JAMF Software:
To much fanfare from the crowd, Previn said that IBM is deploying 1,900 Macs per week and currently have 130,000 Macs and iOS devices in the hands of users. And all of these devices are supported by a total of 24 help desk staff members, meaning that each staff member effectively supports 5,375 employees. One stat that particularly stood out was that 5% of Mac users call the help desk, compared to 40% of PC users. This shows how simple it is for the staff at IBM to use the Mac platform, and reflects the hard work the team has done to make the experience seamless.
Previn went on to say that while the cost of a PC up front is lower, Macs retain their value for longer, finishing with "every Mac that we buy is making and saving IBM money."
IBM and Apple have significantly ramped up their partnership over the last year. What started out as an agreement that would see IBM creating new enterprise apps specifically for iOS has moved on to a deal that has seen IBM commit to deploying 50,000 MacBooks to its employees by the end of the year.
Source: JAMF Software; Via: Apple Insider
